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American actor Series 



EDITED BY LAURENCE HUTTON 



AMERICAN ACTOR SERIES 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 



BY 



CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT 



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JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 
1882 



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Copyright, 1882, 
By James R. Osgood and Company. 

All rights reserved. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



Happy the biographer whose privilege it is to 
recount the life of one distinguished for genius 
and intellect, and at the same time for nobility 
of life and character. Such is my good fortune 
in writing of Charlotte Cushman. Her dramatic 
career will be the subject of this volume, and no 
space will be found for the picturing of her pri- 
vate life. There is, however, no regret felt on 
this account, since all that relates to Charlotte 
Cushman as a woman and as a friend belongs 
more especially to those who were near and dear 
to her, and all that concerns the outside world 
in this regard has been told by her chosen friend 
and biographer far more suitably than another 
could hope to tell it. 

To Miss Stebbins I wish to express my thanks 
here for her generous assistance in placing so 
many of Miss Cushman' s private letters at my 



VI PREFACE. 

disposal. To. Mr. H. A. Clapp, Mr. Lawrence 
Barrett, Mr. Joseph N. Ireland, Mr. William 
Winter, Mr. George Vandenhoff, Mr. William 
T. W. Ball, Mr. Laurence Hutton, and to 
others also, I am indebted for much valuable 
information regarding my subject. 

C. E. C. 

Boston, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 

» 

Chapter Page 

I. 1816-1836 I 

II. 1836- 1840 8 

III. 1840- 1844 21 

IV. 1844 -1847 32 

V. 1847 -1849 49 

VI. 1849- 1852 61 

VII. 1852- 1860 71 

VIII. i860- 1870 85 

IX. 1870- 1874 94 

X. 1874- 1875 II1 

XI. 1875-1876 145 

XII. Letters 148 

XIII. Reminiscences of Mr. Wm. T. W. Ball . . 156 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



-♦- 



Charlotte Cushman Frontispiece 

Charlotte and Susan Cushman as " Romeo and 

Juliet" 44 

Charlotte Cushman 77 

From Tallis's Magazine. 

Charlotte Cushman 94 

From photograph by Warren, of Boston. 

Fac-simile of Play-bill 112 

Fac-simile of Letter of Charlotte Cushman . . 125 

Charlotte Cushman's Grave 147 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



X&c 



CHAPTER I. 
1816-1836. 

Charlotte Saunders Cushman was born July 23, 
181 6, in Richmond Street, Boston, her home being 
next door to that of the comedian, John Gilbert, with 
whom she played as a child.* Her mother's maiden 
name was Mary Eliza Babbit, and both the Cushmans 
and the Babbits were honorably known among the 
early settlers of New England. Robert Cushman, the 
founder of the family in America, is credited with hav- 
ing preached the first sermon ever delivered in New 
England. Elkanah Cushman, the father of Charlotte, 
was of the seventh generation descended from this pio- 
neer preacher. 

Charlotte Cushman made some very short memo- 
randa of her earliest remembrances, and began them 
with the declaration that she was born a tomboy. Al- 
most immediately she speaks of her powers of imitation, 

* In 1867 the " Cushman School " was erected on this spot. 



2 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

which included not only the mimicking of people who 
struck her as peculiar, but also that of the cries of birds, 
the clucking of fowls, and the like. And these powers 
she did not disdain to use all her life, for the amuse- 
ment of her friends, or, better, of children, whom she 
always loved. 

During her school days she made her mark in theat- 
ricals in her mother's attic, and "brought down the 
house " as Selim, the lover, in " Blue Beard." 

When Charlotte was but thirteen years old her father 
met with such reverses that she was obliged to leave 
school and seriously consider how she could best earn 
her own living. She had early shown a love for music, 
and her voice was considered worthy of cultivation. 
Her mother's friends afforded her the best means of 
instruction then at command. She sang more or less 
in church choirs ; and on the following page is the 
programme of the first public concert at which she 
appeared, and in which she is announced simply as 
"a Young Lady." 

At last it happened, in 1835, that Mrs. Wood, who 
appeared in Boston, required a contralto singer in her 
company. Charlotte Cushman was recommended by a 
friend. She went to the Tremont House to rehearse 
with Mrs. Wood, sang at one of her concerts, and from 
that hour her career as an artist began ; for through 
Mrs. Wood's influence she became the pupil of James 
G. Maeder, and under his instruction prepared her first 
part for the public stage. 

She made her professional debut at the Tremont The- 
atre, in April, 1835, in tne "Marriage of Figaro," Mrs. 



SOCIAL CONCERT. 
A VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT 

Will be given by a number of amateurs to their friends, 

On Thursday Evening, March 25, 1830, 

At the Hall, No. 1 Franklin Avenue, Boston. Mr. Farmer will 
preside at the piano-forte. 



PART I. 

Overture, Piano-forte, Mr. Farmer, " Caliph of Bagdad." 

Song, by a Young Lady, " Take this Rose." Piano-forte accom- 
paniment. 

Solo, Mr. Coupa. Guitar. \ 

Chorus, " Hunters' Chorus." 

Duet, Mr. Pray and Mr. Chase. Flutes. 

Song, by a Young Lady, " Oh, Merry Row the Bonny Bark." 
Piano-forte accompaniment. 

Song, Mr. Coupa, " The Soldier's Adieu." Guitar accompani- 
ment. Translation from the French. 

PART II. 

Piano-forte, Mr. Farmer, Variations . . . . G. Farmer. 
Glee, "A Little Farm Well Tilled." By Messrs. Stedman, 

Barry, and Chase. 
Rondo, Messrs. White and Coupa. Violin and 

Guitar Kuffner. 

Trio, " Sweet Home." 

Solo, Flute, Mr. Pray, " O Dolce Concerto," with variations. 

Piano-forte accompaniment. 
Glee, n See Our Bark." Messrs. Stedman, Barry, and Chase. 
Song, by a Young Lady, " Farewell, My Love " . G. Farmer. 

To commence at seven o'clock precisely. 

A. S. Chase, Manager. 



4 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Maeder (Clara Fisher) singing Susa?i?ia, and Charlotte 
the Countess Almaviva. Her second part was that of 
Lucy Bertram, in " Guy Mannering." She went with 
the Maeders to New Orleans, where, through Mr. Mae- 
der's influence, she was engaged as first lady in the opera 
business of the St. Charles Theatre, where he was the 
musical director. Of this time in her life Mr. James E. 
Murdoch speaks as follows in his book called " The 
Stage : " " Being much in the society of the Maeders, I 
frequently met, and had ample opportunity for becoming 
acquainted with, the young opera singer, and for ob- 
serving her disposition both off and on the stage. The 
first time I saw her professionally was in the character 
of Patrick, in the operatic farce of the ' Poor Soldier.' 
Miss Cushman, in the proper costume of her sex in pri- 
vate life, appeared self-reliant and of easy and 'agreea- 
ble manners, but in her soldier dress on the stage she 
challenged attention and asserted a power which im- 
pressed the beholder with an idea of fixed and deter- 
mined purpose. Many years' acquaintance with Miss 
Cushman in public and in private life only confirmed 
the early impression made upon me by this great Amer- 
ican actress. 

" The St. Charles was one of the largest buildings of 
the kind in the United States, and the powers of a 
speaker or singer were taxed to the utmost for the pro- 
duction of the best vocal effects ; and in consequence 
of the vigor of Miss Cushman's efforts to carry the cita- 
del by storm rather than by cautious approaches, in a 
short time she broke down her voice and destroyed her 
prospects as a singer. Her instructor had frequently 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



5 



warned her against the folly of attempting the accom- 
plishment of what was not within the legitimate limits 
of her vocal powers ; he had cautioned her against her 
tendency to undue force of expression, as calculated to 
produce throaty tones injurious to the voice. ' But,' 
said Mr. Maeder, ' the young lady knew better than her 
teacher ; she was almost insane on the subject of dis- 
play and effect, and altogether too demonstrative in the 
way of commanding what is only to be obtained slowly 
and patiently, — operatic success.' Thus Miss Cush- 
man, disregarding the injunction of an experienced and 
thoroughly trained master of music, by her impatience 
of restraint, ruined a fine voice, destroying all hope of 
operatic honors, and was compelled to turn her atten- 
tion to the drama." 

There always remained in Miss Cushman's voice 
a certain quality of tone which was probably the 
result of this early abuse of it, — a quality well suited 
to the deep passions portrayed in her strongest 
parts. 

At this point she consulted Mr. Caldwell, then man- 
ager of the principal theatre in New Orleans ; and he 
advised her to give up the thought of singing, and 
study to be an actress. She was then presented to 
Mr. Barton, the leading man of Mr. Caldwell's com- 
pany, and after a short time, when Mr. Barton was to 
have a benefit, he arranged that she should act Lady 
Macbeth to his Macbeth. Of this we have an account 
in Miss Cushman's own words : " Upon this it was de- 
cided that I should give up singing and take to acting. 
My contract with Mr. Maeder was annulled, it being 



6 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

the end of the season. So enraptured was I with the 
idea of acting this part, and so fearful of anything pre- 
venting me, that I did not tell the manager I had no 
dresses, until it was too late for me to be prevented 
from acting it ; and the day before the performance, 
after rehearsal, I told him. He immediately sat down 
and wrote a note of introduction for me to the tragedi- 
enne of the French Theatre, which then employed 
some of the best among French artists for its company. 
This note was to ask her to help me to costumes for 
the role of Lady Macbeth. I was a tall, thin, lanky 
girl at that time, about five feet six inches in height. 
The French woman, Madame Closel, was a short, fat 
person of not more than four feet ten inches, waist 
full twice the size of mine, with a very large bust ; but 
her shape did not prevent her being a very great 
actress. The ludicrousness of her clothes being made 
to fit me struck her at once. She roared with laugh- 
ter ; but she was very good-natured, saw my distress, 
and set to work to see how she could help it. By dint 
of piecing out the skirt of one dress it was made to 
answer for an underskirt, and then another dress was 
taken in in every direction to do duty as an overdress, 
and so make up the costume. And thus I essayed for 
the first time the part of Lady Macbeth, fortunately 
to the satisfaction of the audience, the manager, and 
all the members of the company." 

Thus, when nineteen years old, through her own 
determination, and unaided by any apparent power 
beyond that fortune which favors the brave, Charlotte 
Cushman's course in life was distinctly marked out 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. y 

before her. Her name, Cushman, signified the cross- 
bearer, and was, among the crusaders, given to the 
man who was held to be most worthy of carrying the 
standard. Charlotte Cushman was the cross-bearer in 
the ranks of American actresses ; she dignified and 
adorned this honorable office, and proved herself to be 
fully equal to its duties. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 



CHAPTER II. 
1836-1840. 

At the end of the season in New Orleans, Miss Cush- 
man went to New York, and immediately applied to 
Mr. Simpson, the manager of the Park Theatre, for an 
engagement. He offered her a trial, which she felt to 
be a slight ; and before any decision had been made 
in the matter, Mr. Thomas Hamblin, manager of the 
Bowery Theatre, called on her and requested her to 
rehearse for him, saying that Mr. Barton had spoken 
so favorably of her that he hoped to engage her. 

She recited parts of several plays, and he offered her 
a three years' engagement, at twenty-five dollars a week 
for the first year, with an increase of ten dollars a 
week each year. She at once accepted, not knowing 
then what she so well realized later, — that a second 
place in a first-rate theatre would have been much 
more to her advantage than a leading position in a 
theatre of lower standing. 

A difficulty now arose concerning her wardrobe, 
which was finally arranged by Mr. Hamblin's becom- 
ing responsible for Miss Cushman, retaining five dol- 
lars a week of her salary. Her affairs then seemed so 
promising that Charlotte sent for her mother to come 
with her younger children to New York. Her unusual 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 



9 



cares and anxieties had told upon her vigorous health, 
and one week before her engagement was to begin 
Miss Cushman was seized with chills and fever, and 
was prevented from making her appearance until three 
weeks after the time intended. As she was to have 
acted but one month at the Bowery Theatre, and then 
at some other house, she had now but a single week 
in which to gain a place with the New York public. 
Her first night, September 12, 1836, she acted Lady 
Macbeth to Mr. Hamblin's Macbeth, with H. B. Harri- 
son as Macduff; on the 13th she personated Heleii 
Macgregor and Mrs. Haller ; and finally took her 
first benefit as Alicia in "Jane Shore," with Mr. Har- 
rison as Gloster, Mr. Hamblin as Hastings, and Miss 
Ann Duff Waring as Jajie Shore. This exertion in- 
duced a return of illness, and Miss Cushman was again 
confined to her bed ; and, not considering her claim 
upon her wardrobe as sufficient to allow her to con- 
trol it, she left it in the theatre, which was burned a 
few days after. Thus was unhappily ended her first 
three years' contract, and she was left as unprovided 
for as before it was made, with the additional burden 
of her family on her hands. 

She next sent to the manager of the principal theatre 
in Albany, and obtained a five weeks' engagement with 
him. Her mother and younger brother accompanied 
her to that city, where she became a favorite, and 
where her mother's cousin, Governor Marcy, did much 
for her by his influence and position. Going there for 
five weeks, she remained five months, and acted in a 
variety of parts. At the end of that time her little 



I0 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

brother was killed by an accident, being thrown from 
a horse she had given him. In her " Recollections," 
when speaking of this death and the grief it caused 
her, Miss Cushman says : " And I determined then, 
that, knowing very little of my art as art, I would seek 
to place myself in a position where I could learn it 
thoroughly. I became aware that one could never 
sail a ship by entering at the cabin windows ; he must 
serve, and learn his trade before the mast. This was 
the way that I would henceforth learn mine." 

While in Albany, Miss Cushman was much in society, 
and is thus spoken of in an account of a great Fire- 
man's Ball given in the theatre : " In all the freshness 
and bloom of youth, magnificently attired, her head 
adorned with an immense and beautiful Bird of Para- 
dise, — as she threaded the mazes of the dance or 
moved gracefully in the promenade, her stately form 
towering above her companions, she was the observed 
of all observers, the bright particular star of the even- 
ing." 

She herself related that it had often been jokingly 
remarked, that more members of the Senate and 
House of Representatives could be found at her bene- 
fits than at the Capitol. 

The reason of Miss Cushman's remaining single has 
never been told to the world more plainly than she 
herself has told it in a letter referring to this winter in 
Albany. She writes : " There was a time in my life of 
girlhood when I thought I had been called upon to 
bear the very hardest thing that can come to a woman. 
A very short time served to show me, in the harder 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. IX 

battle of life which was before me, that this had been 
but a spring stoma, which was simply to help me to a 
clearer, better, richer, and more productive summer. 
If I had been spared this early trial, I should never 
have been so earnest and faithful in my art ; I should 
have still been casting about for the ' counterpart,' 
and not given my entire self to my work, wherein and 
alone I have reached any excellence I have ever at- 
tained, and through which alone I have received my 
reward. God helped me in my art-isolation, and 
rewarded me for recognizing him and helping myself. 
This passed on ; and this happened at a period in my 
life when most women (or children, rather) are look- 
ing to but one end in life, — an end, no doubt, wisest 
and best for the largest number, but which would not 
have been wisest and best for my work, and so far for 
God's work ; for I know he does not fail to set me his 
work to do, and helps me to do it, and helps others to 
help me. . . . 

" Then after this first spring storm and hurricane of 
young disappointment came a lull, during which I 
actively pursued what became a passion, — my art. 
Then I lost my younger brother, upon whom I had 
begun to build most hopefully, as I had reason. He 
was by far the cleverest of my mother's children. He 
had been born into greater poverty than the others ; 
he received his young impressions through a different 
atmosphere ; he was keener, more artistic, more im- 
pulsive, more generous, more full of genius. I lost 
him by a cruel accident, and again the world seemed 
to liquefy beneath my feet, and the waters went over 



12 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

my soul. It became necessary that I should suffer 
bodily to cure my heart-bleed. I placed myself pro- 
fessionally where I found and knew all the mortifica- 
tions in my profession, which seemed for the time to 
strew ashes over the loss of my child-brother (for he 
was my child, and loved me best in all the world), 
thus conquering my art, which, God knows, has never 
failed me, — never failed to bring me rich reward, 
never failed to bring me comfort. I conquered my 
grief and myself. Labor saved me then and always, 
and so I proved the eternal goodness of God." 

As the result of her determination to study her art 
more thoroughly, she made a three years' engagement 
with Mr. Simpson of the Park Theatre, New York, as 
"walking lady" and for "general utility business," to 
commence in September, 1837. This agreement was 
carried out, and ended in September, 1840. 

Meantime, during the spring and summer of 1837, 
she acted a few times in New York and Boston, and 
made a starring engagement in Buffalo and Detroit. 
Of her appearance in Boston, W. W. Clapp, in the 
" Records of the Boston Stage," says : — 

"In the months of May and June, in 1837, Miss 
Charlotte Cushman gave the earliest taste of that dra- 
matic spirit which she has since cultivated to so much 
advantage. On the 30th of May she appeared as 
Lady Macbeth to Barry's Macbeth, and astonished 
every one. She followed up her first triumph by play- 
ing Portia to C. H. Eaton's Shylock, and also per- 
formed Fortunato Falconi, Elvira, and Morgiana ; she 
announced thus early her predilections for male parts 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 



13 



by a performance of Henry in ' Speed the Plough.' 
Although she had given up, by her assumption of these, 
all hopes of attaining eminence in the lyric drama, she 
sung ' Hail Columbia ' on Murdoch's benefit night, 
and was rapturously applauded." 

It is difficult to conceive how any actress can go 
through the amount of labor which Charlotte Cushman 
performed during her three years at the Park Theatre, 
New York. In those days long runs were unknown, 
and would have been regarded as innovations which 
denoted want of capacity in managers and actors. The 
public must have novelty ; this was supplied by a change 
of bill each night, while it was not at all unusual to give 
two or three plays in an evening. 

When she finished her engagement at the Park 
she had been on the stage about four years, and 
had appeared in the following parts : Lady Mac- 
beth, in " Macbeth ; " Count Belino, in " The Devil's 
Bridge ; " Helen Macgregor, in " Rob Roy ; " Alicia, 
in "Jane Shore;" Henry, in "Speed the Plough;" 
Floranthe, in "The Mountaineers;" Mrs. Haller, in 
"The Stranger;" Mrs, Lionel Lynx, in "Married 
Life ; " Joan, in "Joan of Arc ; " Margaret, in " Mar- 
garet of Burgundy ; " Jack Homer, in " Greville 
Cross, or the Druids' Stone ; " Louise, in " Norman 
Leslie ; " Emilia, in " Othello ; " Alvedson, in " The 
Two Galley Slaves ; " George Fair man, in " The Lib- 
erty Tree, or Boston Boys in 1773 ; " Lucy Clifton, in 
" The Fiend of Eddystone ; " He7iry Germain t in 
" The Hut of the Red Mountain ; " Portia, in " The 
Merchant of Venice ; " Julia, in " The Hunchback ; " 



14 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



Tullia, in "Brutus;" Zorilda, in "Timour the Tar- 
tar;" JBelvidera, in "Venice Preserved;" Roxana, 
in " Alexander the Great ; " Romeo, in " Romeo and 
Juliet;" Elvira, in " Pizarro ; " Goner it, in "King 
Lear ; " and Queen Gertrude, in " Hamlet." 

It was at the Park Theatre that she acted Goneril, 
Emilia, and Queen Gertrude with Forrest, and won 
great applause. There is a disagreement among dra- 
matic authors and critics as to the time when she first 
played Meg Merrilies ; it has usually been given as 
in May, 1 83 7, at the National Theatre, under the man- 
agement of Mr. Hackett. I shall here quote Miss 
Stebbins in reference to this matter : — 

" I have sought in vain among the newspaper files of 
the period for the absolute date of her first perform- 
ance of this character ; but other evidence settles it as 
having been in the year 1840-41, during Braham's 
first and only engagement in New York, and at the 
Park Theatre. Her own account of it was substan- 
tially as follows. But first it may be mentioned that 
there is one very ancient newspaper- cutting — which 
is, however, without name or date — in which the fact 
of her assumption of the part, at a moment's notice, 
is thus alluded to : ' Many years ago Miss Charlotte 
Cushman was doing at the Park Theatre what in stage 
parlance is called " general utility business ; " that is, 
the work of three ordinary performers, — filling the gap 
when any one was sick, playing this one's part and 
the other's on occasion, never refusing to do whatever 
was allotted to her. As may be supposed, one who 
held this position had as yet no position to be proud 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. jc 

of. One night " Guy Mannering," a musical piece, 
was announced. It was produced by Mr. Braham, 
the great English tenor, who played Harry Bertram. 
Mrs. Chippendale was cast for Meg Merrilies, but 
during the day was taken ill; so this obscure utility 
actress, this Miss Cushman, was sent for and told to 
be ready in the part by night. She might read it on 
the boards if she could not commit it. But the " util- 
ity woman " was not used to reading her parts ; she 
learned it before nightfall, and played it after nightfall. 
She played it so as to be enthusiastically applauded. 
At this half-day's notice the part was taken up which is 
now so famous among dramatic portraitures.' 

" It was in consequence of Mrs. Chippendale's ill- 
ness that she was called upon on the very day of the 
performance to assume the part. Study, dress, etc., 
had to be an inspiration of the moment. She had 
never especially noticed the part ; as it had been here- 
tofore performed there was not probably much to at- 
tract her ; but as she stood at the side-scene, book in 
hand, awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught 
the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of 
the gypsies, in which one says to the other, alluding to 
her, ' Meg, — why, she is no longer what she was ; she 
doats,' etc., evidently giving the impression that she is 
no longer to be feared or respected, that she is no 
longer in her right mind. With the words a vivid flash 
of insight struck upon her brain. She saw and felt, by 
the powerful dramatic instinct with which she was en- 
dowed, the whole meaning and intention of the charac- 
ter ; and no doubt from that moment it became what 



1 6 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

it never ceased to be, a powerful, original, and con- 
sistent conception in her mind. She gave herself with 
her usual concentrated energy of purpose to this con- 
ception, and flashed at once upon the stage in the 
startling, weird, and terrible manner which we all so 
well remember. On this occasion it so astonished and 
confounded Mr. Braham — little accustomed heretofore 
to such manifestations — that he went to her after the 
play to express his surprise and his admiration. 

" ' I had not thought that I had done anything re- 
markable,' she says, ' and when the knock came at my 
dressing-room door, and I heard Braham 's voice, my 
first thought was, Now what have I done? He is 
surely displeased with me about something, — for in 
those days I was only the utility actress, and had no 
prestige of position to carry me through. Imagine my 
gratification when Mr. Braham said : " Miss Cushman, 
I have come to thank you for the most veritable sen- 
sation I have experienced for a long time. I give you 
my word, when I turned and saw you in that first scene 
I felt a cold chill run all over me. Where have you 
learned to do anything like that? " ' " 

But the part in which she made the greatest im- 
pression while at the Park, was that of Nancy Sikes, in 
" Oliver Twist." After her appearance in that charac- 
ter the public knew her for an actress of high grade. 
Of her assumption of this part, Francis Courtney 
Wemyss says, in his " Theatrical Biography : " "At 
length Nancy Sikes, in ' Oliver Twist,' gave her an 
opportunity of proving what she was capable of accom- 
plishing. As a portrait of female depravity it was pain- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



17 



fully correct, and in all her future career she never 
surpassed the excellence of that performance." 

It is known that this character was not one that Miss 
Cushman would have chosen ; for, true as it is to life, 
and deep as is the lesson it teaches, — appreciated for 
its dreadful faithfulness when read as the great novelist 
wrote it, — it is yet one of a class of characters not 
generally approved when seen upon the stage. But 
when she acted it she brought to it all her strength ; 
she did not hesitate to go thoroughly into its lowest 
depths with the same power as that with which she as- 
cended to lofty heights in her personation of Qicee?i 
Katherine and other noble women. The effect she 
produced in it was such that frequently, in later years, 
her managers begged for its reproduction. 

In the assumption of male characters Miss Cushman 
was very successful • her Romeo will be spoken of later ; 
she is the only woman who ever acted the role of Car- 
dinal Wolsey. 

It is to be regretted that the printed records of this 
time in her life are few. One testimonial of value is 
found in a Boston Journal of 1863, m which the writer, 
an Englishman, gives a resume of his former impres- 
sions of Miss Cushman's acting, and says, in speaking 
of a time more than twenty years past : — 

" In one of my evening rambles about the city [New 
York] I found myself passing the Park Theatre, and I 
was moved to go in. There was little, I confess, in 
outward appearance that was cheerful or exciting. The 
scenery was poor, tawdry, and inappropriate ; the lights 
were dim, and the audience not large. The play was 



1 8 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

' Othello/ and on the whole the performance was spir- 
itless. In the part of Emilia I saw a large-sized, fair- 
complexioned young woman, not of handsome but of 
impressive presence. The effect of her denunciation 
of the Moor, after the murder of Desdemo?ia, was elec- 
tric. The few lines of high passion which the part 
contains, by the power with which the actress delivered 
them, made the part, insignificant though it is, the 
leading one on that occasion. By looking at the bill 
I found the name of this actress was Charlotte Cush- 
man. She was rapturously applauded, and this was 
the only hearty applause that was given during the 
evening. I knew that there was no ordinary artist in 
this then comparatively unknown young woman. I saw 
her next as Lady Macbeth, and my conviction was 
only the more confirmed by this terrible test of any 
genius. I went away filled with admiration, resolved to 
see this powerful actress as often as I should have the 
opportunity. I then foresaw her fame, and time has 
justified my prophecy. I saw her frequently afterward, 
when she played with Mr. Macready, and even with 
this great and cultivated artist she held her own. She 
had not had his experience, but she had genius. There 
were times when she more than rivalled him ; when in 
truth she made him play second. I observed this in 
New York, and a critic in the Ti77ies bore witness to 
it in London. I have seen her throw such energy, 
physical and mental, into her performance as to 
weaken, for the time, the impression of Mr. Macrea- 
dy's magnificent acting. She profited, no doubt, by 
his admirable ability and veteran experience, but she 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. jg 

nevertheless always preserved her own independence 
and thorough individuality." 

While Miss Cushman was at the Park Theatre her 
sister Susan made an unfortunate marriage, and by the 
desertion of her husband was left in destitute circum- 
stances with a child. Through the influence of Char- 
lotte she was led to cultivate her talent for the stage, 
and was engaged at a small price by the managers with 
whom her sister made contracts. I take the following 
from an interesting article which appeared in Appleton's 
Journal of March 21, 1874 : - — 

" Charlotte urged the manager to increase their sala- 
ries, — hers to twenty-five dollars a week, her sister's to 
twelve. Mr. Simpson refused, and the Cushman sisters 
left him and went into the stock company of Burton's 
theatre at Philadelphia. It was not long before she 
was called back to the Park at her own terms ; it was 
found difficult to replace one who did so many things 
thoroughly well. 

" In a few months, however, there was a further feud 
with the manager, and Charlotte felt and exercised her 
power, for it was on her sister's account and not her 
own. A certain New York journalist had a lady friend 
whom he wished to have Mr. Simpson engage for his 
company. The good parts of Susan Cushman would 
suit the new-comer. Journalists then, as now, had a 
very potent method of enforcing their wishes with the- 
atrical managers, and the latter were perhaps even more 
obsequious. So Mr. Simpson obeyed the dictate of the 
critic, and announced the change to Miss Charlotte 
Cushman. The latter protested with stormy and reso- 



20 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

lute words, and at last threatened to resign. The man- 
ager was in a quandary ; he could not afford to offend 
his editorial friend, neither would it do to drive away 
the most useful member of his company. 

" The critic, of course, heard of the turmoil, and ad- 
dressed a letter to Charlotte, in which he threatened 
that 'if Miss Cushman did not tread carefully she 
should be driven from the stage, if there was any virtue 
in a New York audience or power in the New York 
press.' This audacious impertinence roused the high- 
spirited actress to the extreme pitch of indignation. 
She took the matter to a very prominent editor for ad- 
vice. He prepared an article in which the case was 
fully characterized in the language it deserved, and it 
was printed in the morning issue.- That night a tre- 
mendous audience gathered to see our actress in the 
character of Lady Gay Spanker. The interest was 
generally heightened by an anticipation of something 
like a row, or, at least, a powerful claque organized to 
hiss down the heroine of the evening; but when, in 
the play, Max Harkaway says, ' Look ! look ! here 
comes Lady Gay Spanker across the lawn at a hand- 
gallop,' there was such a stormy shout of acclamation 
as set forever at rest any doubts of the hold of Miss 
Cushman on the public." 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN-. 2 \ 



CHAPTER III. 
1 840 -i 844. 

After leaving the Park Theatre the sisters acted for 
some time in Philadelphia. Charlotte frequently took 
male characters in order to give Susan the principal 
female parts, and in this way they were successful. 
Later, in New York, in the season of 1841-42, they 
played together at the Park upwards of ninety nights. 
The opening night, August 30, " Midsummer Night's 
Dream " was given for the first time in fifteen years. 
Miss Cushman appeared as Oberon and Susan as Hel- 
ena. On the 28th of September a committee of ladies 
got up a complimentary benefit for her old friend Mrs. 
Maeder, on which occasion Miss Cushman took the 
part of the Hon. Mrs. Gle?iroy, in "Town and Country," 
while Susan acted Emily, in the farce of the " Bee- 
hive." 

On Oct. 11, 1841, previous to the evening referred to 
in the last chapter, Boucicault's comedy of " London 
Assurance " was produced for the first time in the 
United States. The scenery, furniture, and appoint- 
ments were finer than any that had before been used 
on the American stage. The play proved so popular 
that it was repeated nearly fifty times. It was cast as 
follows : — 



22 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Sir Harcourt Courtly Henry Placide. 

Charles Courtly Wm. Wheatley. 

Dazzle James S. Browne. 

Max Harkaway John Fisher. 

Dolly Spanker W. H. Williams. 

Mark Meddle W. H. Latham. 

Cool A. Andrews. 

Lady Gay Spanker Miss Cushman. 

„ TT , ( Miss Clarendon. 

Grace Harkaway | Miss Buloid. 

Pert Mrs. Vernon. 

This season was a successful one for the sisters, and 
Charlotte added several new parts to the large number 
she had previously acted. 

In the winter of 1842 Miss Cushman assumed the 
management of the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadel- 
phia. She opened, September 22, with "The Belle's 
Stratagem " and " A Nabob of an Hour." I can find 
no programme of that night, but her company included 
Messrs. W. Chippendale, Wm. S. Fredericks, and Wm. 
Wheatley, with Alexina Fisher, the Vallee sisters, and 
Susan Cushman. The Chestnut Street Theatre was at 
this time leased by Miss Mary Maywood, and naturally 
there was considerable emulation between the "rival 
queens," as Miss Cushman and Miss Maywood were 
called. 

A single season as manager seems to have satisfied 
Miss Cushman. The next year Mr. W. R. Blake re- 
lieved her at the Walnut Street Theatre, and this left 
her more leisure and energy to devote to her acting ; 
for it was not possible, even with her vigor, to do more 
than one thing at a time. The fact of her having 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



23 



attempted it may in some measure account for the 
deficiencies in her personations, noted by Mr. George 
Vandenhoff, who played at her theatre early in October, 
1842. He writes : — 

" Charlotte Cushman, whom I met now for the first 
time, was by no means then the actress which she after- 
wards became. She displayed at that day a rude, 
strong, uncultivated talent. It was not till after she had 
seen and acted with Mr. Macready — which she did 
the next season — that she really brought artistic study 
and finish to her performances. At this time she was 
frequently careless in the text, and negligent of re- 
hearsals. She played the Queen to me in 'Hamlet,' 
and I recollect her shocking my ear, and very much 
disturbing my impression of the reality of the situation, 
by her saying to me in the Closet scene (Act III.), 

1 What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not kill me ? ' 
instead of 

' What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not murder me ? ' 

thus substituting a weak word for a strong one, diluting 
the force and destroying the rhythm of the verse. She 
was much annoyed at her error when I told her of 
it ; but confessed that she had always so read the line, 
unconscious of being wrong. 

" I played Rolla with her, and she was even then 
the best Elvira I ever saw. The power of her scorn 
and the terrible earnestness of her revenge were im- 
mense. Her greatest part — fearfully natural, dread- 
fully intense, horribly real — was Nancy Sikes, in the 
dramatic version of ' Oliver Twist.' It was too true, 



24 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



it was painful, this actual presentation of Dickens's poor, 
abandoned, abused, murdered outcast of the streets, — 
a tigress with a touch, and but one, of woman's almost 
deadened nature, blotted and trampled under foot by 
man's cruelty and sin. 

" It is in darkly shadowed, lurid-tinged characters 
of a low order, like this and Meg Merrilies, — half 
human, half demon, — with the savage animal reality 
of passion, and the weird fascination of crime, redeemed 
by fitful flashes of womanly feeling, that she excels. 
. . . Meg Merrilies has been her great fortune-teller 
and fortune-maker. . . . 

" Looking over my papers, I find a most character- 
istic note from her to me during the above engagement 
at Philadelphia, which — for it contains nothing confi- 
dential — I give my readers as a curiosity. It is written 
in a bold, masculine hand, something ' like the hand 
that writ it.' The italics mark the words which were 
underscored heavily. 

' Wednesday Night, Half past 2. 

1 Mon Ami, — After a late supper, prepared for you 
(but no one could get a sight of you all the evening), 
and studying a long part, I have to request a great favor 
of you, viz., to take the enclosed packet for me to Boston. 
I have to-day written some three or four letters — not of 
introduction (that might offend yow), but calculated to 
do you some service — to Boston. I shall only be too 
proud if they are of any service to you ; for, without 
nonsense, I have scarcely ever seen one I should be 
more sincerely happy to serve than yourself, — and no 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



25 



humbug ! It is a matter of indifference to me whether 
you believe this or not — / feel it — and so God bless 
you ! till we meet again. You shall hear from me 
shortly, — and believe me 

' Sincerely your friend, 

'Charlotte Cushman. 

' P. S. Half asleep, a bad pen, no ink, no paper, and 
as low-spirited as a fiend I All excuses sufficient.' " 

Of her Nancy Sikes, Mr. Lawrence Barrett, who had 
appeared with her as Fagin, spoke to me, in substance, 
as follows : It was an astonishing thing, as well to those 
of the profession as to the public, — but the death scene 
was simply superlative in effect; she dragged herself 
on to the stage in a wonderful manner, and, keeping her 
face away from her audience, produced a feeling of 
chilly horror by the management of her voice as she 
called for Bill, and begged of him to kiss her. Mr. 
Barrett said, " it sounded as if she spoke through blood, 
and the whole effect was far greater than that which 
any other actress has ever made, with the sight of the 
face and all the horrors which can be added." This 
part was eminently her own creation, conceived at a 
time when she had had small opportunity for any good 
training. 

It was in the season of 1842-43 that Miss Cushman 
first met Mr. Macready, whose influence was destined 
to be so greatly in her favor, by aiding in the fuller de- 
velopment of her talent, and by encouraging her to 
seek and to win fame in Great Britain. She always 
said that her professional life began when she met him. 



2 6 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

In Macready's Diary, under date of October 23, he 
thus speaks of Miss Cushman, with whom he had acted 
for the first time : — 

" The Miss Cushman who acted Lady Macbeth, 
interested me much. She has to learn her art, but 
she showed mind and sympathy with me, — a novelty 
so refreshing to me on the stage." 

In December, 1843, at ^ r - Macready's request, 
Miss Cushman went to the Park Theatre in New York, 
and acted Evadne to his Melantius, in Knowles's trag- 
edy of " The Bridal." She also appeared as Beatrice 
to his Benedick the first time he acted that part; and 
finally, on December 15, — Macready's benefit night 
and farewell before going South, — his adaptation of 
Byron's " Marino Faliero " was given with this cast : — 

Marino Faliero Mr. Macready. 

Bertuccio Faliero A. Andrews. 

Leoni Henry V. Lovell. 

Benintende Wm. A. Vache. 

Michel Steno Mr. Toomer. 

Israel Bertuccio John Ryder. 

Philip Calandero Thos. A. Lyne. 

Dagolino Wm. Wheatley. 

Vincenza John Crocker. 

Battista Henry Hunt. 

Angiolina Miss Cushman. 

Marianna Miss Cecelia McBride. 

After her first appearance with Mr. Macready, Miss 
Cushman wrote to her mother : " In great haste I 
write only a few words, with a promise to write again 
to-night after the play, and tell you all particulars of 
my great and triumphant success of last night, — of 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



27 



my reception, of being called out after the play, and 
hats and handkerchiefs waved to me, flowers sent to 
me, etc." 

In the " Cushman Genealogy " there is an interest- 
ing account of her, in which we read : — 

" This engagement forms an era in the history of 
Miss Cushman of no slight importance, and one of 
which, we may say with propriety, she had great rea- 
son to be proud. It will be admitted by all that the 
eminent position of that great master, the professional 
station of Mr. Macready, was the foremost in the art ; 
that he might have chosen from the world any partner 
in his triumphs he chose ; and that the choice from so 
distinguished a person necessarily conveyed a compli- 
ment of no insignificant order. Choosing Miss Cush- 
man, he selected her from all the world, and together 
they achieved wonders. 

" Their engagement together in Boston at the Melo- 
deon, which concluded at the middle of October, 1844, 
was the most brilliant theatrical engagement ever played 
in that city, in many respects ; and it certainly will not 
be denied that during its continuance persons visited the 
theatre who had never countenanced dramatic represen- 
tations, and whose lofty souls found sweeter communion 
with the bards in the closet than with their mutilation 
upon the stage. Frequently visiting the Melodeon might 
be seen such lights of the age as the Hon. Daniel Web- 
ster, the Hon. Charles Sumner, Judges Story and Shaw, 
the " Old Man Eloquent," Professor Henry W. Long- 
fellow, — all listeners and admirers as well of Miss Cush- 
man as of Mr. Macready." 



28 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

The newspapers of the time were unsparing in her 
praise, and one of them thus spoke of her : — 

" Miss Cushman possesses the elements of a fine 
actress ; with an imposing person, she has a vigorous 
mind ; she can conceive forcibly and utter nobly. By 
her careful preparation she shows that she loves her 
art ; and therefore her industry is equal to her enthu- 
siasm. Those who labor to reach an elevated standard, 
in every effort to satisfy themselves, will gain success 
with others. Miss Cushman makes progress in this on- 
ward course ; she grows daily in favor, and yet favor 
must increase rapidly if it outrun her merits. Although 
characters of a solemn and tragic order suit her best, 
in the most austere impersonations gleams are ever 
and anon let in upon the darkness, which reveal a gen- 
tle and kindly womanhood." 

Miss Cushman now decided to go to England, and 
made her farewell appearance at the Park Theatre, 
New York, Oct. 25, 1844. The play was " Much Ado 
About Nothing," and Mr. Vandenhoff acted Benedick 
to her Beatrice. In his Note Book he thus speaks of 
it: — 

" The house was by no means full ; and she played 
Beatrice, that night, carelessly or over- anxiously, I don't 
know which, — the effect of either is much the same. 
I recollect particularly, that she ran part of one act 
into another in a scene with me, in a very perplexed 
and perplexing manner. When we came off she ex- 
claimed : 

" i For heaven's sake, what have I been doing? ' 

"' Knocking the fourth and fifth acts together ex- 
temporaneously,' I replied. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



29 



" The fact is, she was disappointed with the house, 
the result being then of some moment to her. That 
audience little dreamt with what an accession of repu- 
tation and fortune she would return amongst them ! " 

To those who only knew Miss Cushman in later years 
it seems incredible that she should ever have acted all 
the parts that have been named in this and the pre- 
ceding chapters ; not only on account of the immense 
labor they required, but also from the apparent un- 
suitableness of many of them to her powers as they 
appeared when grandly developed and when, with the 
repertoire of Lady Macbeth, Meg Merrilies, and Queen 
Katherine, she had the world at her feet. 

Some of Miss Cushman's admirers seem to be mis- 
taken in supposing that she reached her height at this 
early date, — at a bound, so to speak. It is certainly 
more logical, as well as more creditable to her, to say 
that from year to year her appreciation and rendering 
of these great characters grew brighter and brighter 
unto the perfect day. And thus it was ; for many who 
had always praised and loved her know that never was 
she so grand, never so much the noble queen, as 
when, in her last appearance as Katherine in Boston, 
these words rang out : — 



i t> 



" I will not tarry ; no, nor ever more, 
Upon this business, my appearance make 
In any of their courts." 

The following lines, bearing Miss Cushman's name 
and printed in the Knickerbocker Magazine, are sup- 
posed to have been written about this time : — 



3o 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAJST. 



LINES BY CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Suggested by a visit to the Shaker Settlement, near Albany. 

Mysterious worshippers ! 
Are you indeed the things you seem to be, 
Of earth, — yet of its iron influence free 

From all that stirs 
Our being's pulse, and gives to fleeting life 
What well the Hun has termed " the rapture of the 
strife " ? 

Are the gay visions gone, 
Those day-dreams of the mind by fate there flung, 
And the fair hopes to which the soul once clung, 

And battled on ? 
Have ye outlived them, — all that must have sprung 
And quickened into life when ye were young ? 

Does memory never roam 
To ties that, grown with years, ye idly sever ; 
To the old haunts that ye have left forever, 

Your early homes ; 
Your ancient creed, once faith's sustaining lever ; 
The loved who erst prayed with you — now may never ? 

Has not ambition's paean 
Some power within your hearts to wake anew 
To deeds of higher emprise — worthier you, 

Ye monkish men, 
Than may be reaped from fields ? Do ye not rue 
The drone-like course of life ye now pursue ? 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ^i 

The camp, the council, — all 
That wooes the soldier to the field of fame, 
That gives the sage his meed, the bard his name 

And coronal, 
Bidding a people's voice their praise proclaim, — 
Can ye forego the strife, nor own your shame ? 

Have ye forgot your youth, 
When expectation soared on pinions high, 
And hope shone out on boyhood's cloudless sky, 

Seeming all truth ; 
When all looked fair to fancy's ardent eye, 
And pleasure wore an air of sorcery ? 

You, too ! What early blight 
Has withered your fond hopes, that ye thus stand, 
A group of sisters, 'mong this monkish band ? 

Ye creatures bright ! 
Has sorrow scored your brows with demon hand, 
Or o'er your hopes passed treachery's burning brand ? 

Ye would have graced right well 
The bridal scene, the banquet, or the bowers 
Where mirth and revelry usurp the hours ; 

Where, like a spell, 
Beauty is sovereign, where man owns its powers, 
And woman's tread is o'er a path of flowers. 

Yet seem ye not as those 
Within whose bosoms memories vigils keep : 
Beneath your drooping lids no passions sleep; 

And your pale brows 
Bear not the tracery of emotion deep, — 
Ye seem too cold and passionless to weep ! 



32 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHAPTER IV. 
1844-1847. 

When Macready bade Miss Cushman good-bye, 
his last words to her were, " Come to England, where 
your talents will be appreciated at their true value." 

It is doubtful if without his encouragement Miss 
Cushman would have taken this great step ; for we 
know from her own records of this time that she was 
herself very doubtful as to what manner of reception 
she should meet with ; and, in fact, she was careful, out 
of the small sum which she had saved, to keep enough 
in hand to bring her home again in case of her failure. 

In her diary, kept during her voyage, she records her 
doubts and fears, regrets her ambition, and questions 
whether it would not have been wiser for her to have 
remained content with the moderate competency 
which she was sure of at home, than to subject herself 
to " miserable, frightful uncertainty," and all the anxie- 
ties and labors which must ensue. Added to this was 
the ever haunting thought that all might end in a dis- 
aster that would weaken her hold upon the American 
public, and be worse than the mortification of a failure 
abroad. 

She speaks with tender affection of her family, and of 
her deep sorrow at being separated from them by so 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



33 



great a distance ; but at length, before the voyage was 
over, her accustomed energy and will asserted them- 
selves, and she determined not to acknowledge the 
possibility of mischance. She had sailed with the 
thought of a six months' absence. She now declares 
that, if she acts at all, she will not return to her home 
and friends until she has achieved such success as they 
would wish for her; and adds, that though a longer 
period than that mentioned would seem an age, yet she 
will summon patience to her aid, and conquer all. 

In her diary she copied, as if for comfort and en- 
couragement, that much prized sentence from " Hype- 
rion : " " Look not mournfully into the past ; it comes 
not back again. Wisely improve the present ; it is 
thine. Go forth into the shadowy future without fear 
and with a manly heart." Also from Browning's 
" Paracelsus " the passage beginning, — 

" What though 
It be so ? — if indeed the strong desire 
Eclipse the aim in me ? " 

One sentence from this passage was always a favorite of 
hers : — 

" Be sure that God ne'er dooms to waste 
The strength he deigns impart." 

Miss Cushman reached England, Nov. 18, 1844. 
She was accompanied by the most faithful of waiting- 
women, Sally Mercer, who from that time was what 
Miss Cushman called her, " her right hand," as long 
as her mistress lived. After a week in Liverpool 
Miss Cushman went through Scotland with a party of 



34 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



her fellow-passengers, and by the time she reached 
London was restored to health and spirits. 

Miss Cushman showed much self-control - and sa- 
gacity in her course concerning her appearance before 
the London public. After using such exertions as 
seemed proper to her, and failing to make an engage- 
ment, she went over to Paris, where Macready was act- 
ing with Miss Helen Faucit, under the management of 
Mr. Mitchell. Upon her arrival at Liverpool she had 
received letters from Mr. Macready, asking her to join 
him in Paris. He told her that he could not assure 
her leading parts, but she could make a beginning. 
She replied : " Can I have Lady Macbeth ? I will ac- 
cede to your wishes in all other things." This Ma- 
cready could not promise, as Miss Faucit was already 
alarmed by the praises of Miss Cushman which she had 
heard from him. 

So, as has been said, she went to Scotland, passed 
some time in London, and finally went to Paris, be- 
cause she had time at command, and wished to see all 
she could of the world and of good acting. One writer, 
in speaking of this period, says : — 

" Manager Mitchell had had some trouble with la 
belle Faucit, and was anxious to whip the fair rebel 
back into traces. So, at the instigation, perhaps, of 
Macready, he offered ' leading business ' to Miss Cush- 
man. The latter disdained to build her own promotion 
on the downfall of another. She could remain in 
obscurity, she could return to the old subordinate 
drudgery, but she could not soil her own fine sense of 
professional honor. She knew Macready's persistence 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



35 



and magnetism, and rather than subject herself to 
more urging she fled back to England without another 
interview." 

Concerning the manner of Miss Cushman's engage- 
ment with Maddox, the manager of the Princess's The- 
atre, there are two accounts. I shall give both of them. 
The first is, that when Maddox was to bring out For- 
rest he wished to engage Miss Cushman as his support, 
and that she replied to his proposition : "I will accede 
on certain conditions. In the first place, ten pounds a 
night ; in the second, I must have one night before 
Forrest comes for my debut in a great part. I will 
play JBianca" To these conditions Maddox finally 
assented. The writer continues : — 

" That Thursday night, big with her fate, arrived, and 
the curtain went up on a cold and meagre audience. 
The first two acts passed tamely enough, for the com- 
pany supporting her seemed utterly indifferent to their 
work ; but in the third act the audience commenced 
to look at each other and wonder, and their hearts to 
burn. The passionate intensity of the Bianca electri- 
fied, too, the inert stocks with which she was sur- 
rounded, and they were involuntarily swept, by the 
magnetic power that seemed to radiate from her, into 
something like rapport in their own acting. But in the 
fourth act Miss Cushman carried everything before her. 
The mighty passion and agony of the last great scene 
was so overpowering that the actress fainted away at its 
close, and she had to be supported in front of the cur- 
tain to acknowledge the continued and tumultuous 
thunders of applause with which that English audience 



36 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



welcomed the rise of another great light on their dra- 
matic horizon. 

" She slept that night with an infinite peace in her 
heart. The triumph that she had looked forward to 
and labored over for ten long years of anguish, suffer- 
ing, toil, and want of appreciation, had at last come, 
and in such full measure as to gratify her utmost 
wishes." 

The second account of the engagement is that of 
Mr. Vandenhoff, who gives it as from Maddox's own 
lips. If not as nattering to Miss Cushman, in one sense, 
as the above, it forcibly presents her wondrous power 
to make herself felt in spite of prejudices and adverse 
circumstances of any kind : — 

" The manner in which she obtained her first en- 
gagement in London is so characteristic of the spirit 
and pluck of the woman, that I cannot resist telling it 
as it was related to me by Maddox, the manager of 
the Princess's Theatre (1845). 

" On her first introduction to him Miss Cushman's 
personal gifts did not strike him as exactly those which 
go to make up a stage heroine, and he declined engag- 
ing her. Charlotte had certainly no great pretensions 
to beauty, but she had perseverance and energy, 
and knew that there was the right metal in her; so 
she went to Paris with a view to finding an engage- 
ment there with an English company. She failed, too, 
in that, and returned to England more resolutely than 
ever bent on finding employment there, because it was 
now more than ever necessary to her. It was a matter 
of life and death, almost. She armed herself, therefore, 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



37 



with letters (so Maddox told me) from persons who 
were likely to have weight with him, and again pre- 
sented herself at the Princess's ; but the little Hebrew 
was as obdurate as Shylock, and still declined her prof- 
fered services. Repulsed, but not conquered, she rose 
to depart ; but as she reached the door she turned and 
exclaimed : ' I know I have enemies in this country ; but ' 
(and here she cast herself on her knees, raising her 

clenched hand aloft) ' so help me ! I '11 defeat 

them ! ' She uttered this with the energy of Lady 
Macbeth, and the prophetic spirit of Meg Merrilies. 
' Helho ! ' said Maddox to himself, ' s' help me ! she 's 
got de shtuff in her ! ' and he gave her an appearance, 
and afterwards an engagement in his theatre." 

Of her first appearance as Bianca, in " Fazio," the 
journals spoke with enthusiasm. The London Sun 
said : — 

" America has long owed us a heavy dramatic debt 
for enticing away from us so many of our best actors. 
She has now more than repaid it by giving us the great- 
est of actresses, Miss Cushman. This lady made her 
first appearance before an English audience at Prin- 
cess's Theatre last evening ; and since the memorable 
first appearance of Edmund Kean, in 1814, never has 
there been such a debut on the boards of an English 
theatre. She is, without exception, the very first actress 
that we have. True, we have very lady-like, accom- 
plished, finished artistes, but there is a wide and impas- 
sable gulf between them and Miss Cushman, — the gulf 
which divides talent, even of the very highest order, 
from genius. That godlike gift is Miss Cushman's, 



38 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



strictly speaking. She is no artiste, or if she is, hers is 
that highest reach of the art, ars celare artem" 
The Times gave its verdict as follows : — 
"The great characteristics of Miss Cushman are 
her earnestness, her intensity, her quick apprehension 
of ' readings,' her power to dart from emotion to emo- 
tion with the greatest rapidity, as if carried on by im- 
pulse alone. The early part of the play affords an 
audience no criterion of what an actress can do ; but 
from the instant where she suspects that her husband's 
affections are wavering, and with a flash of horrible en- 
lightenment exclaims, ' Fazio, thou hast seen Aldabella ! ' 
Miss Cushman's career was certain. The variety which 
she threw into the dialogue with her husband — from 
jealousy dropping back into tenderness, from hate pass- 
ing to love, while she gave an equal intensity to each 
successive passion, as if her whole soul were for the 
moment absorbed in that only — was astonishing, and 
yet she always seemed to feel as if she had not done 
enough. Her utterance was more and more earnest, 
more and more rapid, as if she hoped the very force of 
the words would give her an impetus. The crowning 
effort was the supplication to Aldabella, when the wife, 
falling on her knees, makes the greatest sacrifice of her • 
pride to save the man she has destroyed. Nothing 
could exceed the determination with which, lifting her 
clasped hands, she urged her suit, — making offer after 
offer to her proud rival, as if she could not give too 
much, and feared to reflect on the value of her conces- 
sions, — till at last, repelled by the cold Marchioness 
and exhausted by her own passion, she sank huddled 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



39 



into a heap at her feet. Of the whole after-part of the 
drama, which was distinguished throughout by a sus- 
tained energy, this was her great triumph. We need 
hardly say that Miss Cushman is likely to prove a great 
acquisition to the London stage. For passion — real, 
impetuous, irresistible passion — she has not at present 
her superior." 

The Londoji Herald said : — 

" Miss Cushman is tall and commanding, having a 
fine stage figure. The expression of her face is curi- 
ous, reminding us of Macready, — a suggestion still 
further strengthened by the tones of her voice, and fre- 
quently by her mode of speech. But that is nothing. 
She soon proved that she was a great artist on her own 
account ; that she not only possessed peculiar sensi- 
tiveness, but that she had all the tact and efficiency re- 
sulting from experience. Her energy never degenerated 
into bombast, and rarely was she artificial. There are 
several situations in the tragedy requiring the most con- 
summate skill on the part of the actress to render them 
fully effective, and she achieved at each successive point 
a fresh triumph. Her tenderness is beautifully ener- 
getic and impassioned, while her violence, such as when 
the sentiment of jealousy suddenly crosses her, is broad 
and overwhelming, but at the same time not overdone. 
Miss Cushman is altogether a highly accomplished ac- 
tress, and it may be easily foreseen that her career in 
this country will be a most brilliant one." 

She next appeared with Forrest in " Macbeth," and 
the honors of the night were hers, as on this occasion 
Forrest was received with marks of disapprobation ; 



40 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



which proves that the dislike of him was personal, and not 
a prejudice against American actors, since favors were 
at the same moment showered upon Miss Cushman. 

This fact, however, led Forrest to believe that Miss 
Cushman had entered into a league against him, and 
from that moment there existed a fierce hatred between 
them. He never forgave the imaginary meanness he 
had imputed to her, and she disliked him heartily for 
thus misjudging her. She even went so far as to insist 
that he was not a good actor ! And yet it is probable 
that somewhere, deep in their own hearts, they respected 
and admired each other, as is indicated by the follow- 
ing story. They both happened to be one evening at 
the same theatre when an autograph hunter presented 
himself to Miss Cushman and asked if she would write 
her name, adding that he should also ask the same 
favor of Mr. Forrest. Miss Cushman said : " Go first to 
him ; I cannot take precedence of so great a man." 
The collector went as directed, and, without telling Mr. 
Forrest of the conversation, said he should also request 
Miss Cushman to write her name. Forrest then replied 
in almost the precise words that Miss Cushman had 
used, — that he would follow, not precede so great a 
woman. 

Her engagement at the Princess's was continued 
through eighty-four nights. Under date of March 2, 
1845, she wrote to her mother : — 

"By the packet of the 10th I wrote you a few lines 
and sent a lot of newspapers, which could tell you in so 
much better language than I could of my brilliant and 
triumphant success in London. I can say no more to 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAJST. 



41 



you than this, — that it is far, far beyond my most san- 
guine expectations. In my most ambitious moments I 
never dreamed of the success which has awaited me 
and crowned every effort I have made. To you I 
should not hesitate to tell all my grief and all my fail- 
ure if it had been such, for no one could have felt more 
with me and for me. Why then should I hesitate 
(unless through a fear that I might seem egotistical) to 
tell you all my triumphs, all my success ? Suffice it, — 
all my successes put together since I have been upon the 
stage would not come near my success in London ; and 
I only wanted some one of you here to enjoy it with me 
to make it complete." 

On March 28, after telling of her many calls, invita- 
tions, and other personal compliments, she says : — 

" It seems almost exaggerated, this account ; but 
indeed you would laugh if you could see the way in 
which I am besieged, and if you could see the heaps of 
complimentary letters and notes you would be amused. 
All this, as you may imagine, reconciles me more to 
England, and now I think I might be willing to stay 
longer. If my family were only with me I think I 
could be content. Sergeant Talfourd has promised to 
write a play for me by next year. I have played Bianca 
four times, Emilia twice, Lady Macbeth six times, Mrs. 
Haller five, and Rosalind five, in five weeks. I am 
sitting to five artists, so you may see I am very busy. 
I hesitate to write even to you the agreeable and com- 
plimentary things that are said and done to me here, 
for it looks monstrously like boasting. I like you to 
know it, but I hate to tell it to you myself." 



42 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



The engagements which Miss Cushman had made in 
Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dublin, and other cities were 
given up on account of her London success ; and in 
the early summer her family went to her in England, 
and she established them in a house in Bayswater. 

The opinions of the London press of that time upon 
her various personations are now a matter of history, 
and are of great interest, serving as they do to remind 
us that, great as she was in her few later characters, her 
power was not limited by them. Some of the most ably 
written criticisms are in part given here : — 

" On Thursday night Miss Cushman gave us the first 
opportunity of seeing her in a Shakespearian character, 
— the sweet, merry, mocking, deep-feeling, true, loving 
Rosalind, whose heart and head are continually playing 
at cross-purposes ; . . . whilst under her womanly guise 
the Rosalind of Miss Cushman was a high-bred though 
most gentle and sweet-tempered lady, with the mirthful 
spirit which nature had given to her saddened by the 
misfortunes of herself and father ; but, with the indig- 
nant reply which she makes to the Duke, her uncle, on 
being banished as a traitor, this phase of her character 
disappears. No sooner is the plan of flight conceived 
and resolved upon, and the words uttered, 

1 Were it not better, 
Because that I am more than common tall, 
That I did suit me all points like a man ? ' 

than all sadder thoughts disappear to make room for 
the overflowing spirits of the woman. Love itself is put 
as a mark to be shot at by wit j or rather it is love that 
arms wit against itself, and gives it all its point. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



43 



"But we hear some one say, 'You are speaking of 
Rosalind, instead of the lady who enacted the part on 
Thursday night.' We beg to say it is one and the 
same thing. If ever we looked upon, heard, conceived 
Rosalind, it was upon that occasion. If ever we lis- 
tened to the playful wit, the sweet mocking, the merry 
laugh of Rosalind, if ever we saw her graceful form, her 
merry eye, her arched brows, her changing looks, it was 
then and there. Mrs. Nesbit's Rosalind was a sweet 
piece of acting, full of honey ; Madame Vestris's Rosa- 
lind is all grace and coquetry; Miss Helen Faucit's 
(by far the best of them) is full of wit, mirth, and 
beauty; but Miss Cushman was Rosalind. . . . We 
must confess that, after seeing Miss Cushman in Rianca 
and Mrs. Haller, we thought her genius essentially 
tragic ; and had we seen her only in Rosalind, we 
should have thought it essentially comic ; but the fact 
is, as with Shakespeare himself, and most other great 
poets, the highest genius necessarily embraces both 
elements of tragic and comic. . . . 

" Miss Cushman's features, if they are deficient in reg- 
ular beauty, have that flexibility which makes every ex- 
pression natural to them, and causes them to reflect 
each thought which passed through the author's brain 
as he drew the character. Never did we hear Shake- 
speare's language more perfectly enunciated. Not a 
syllable was lost, and each syllable was a note. The 
beauties of the author were as clear, as transparent, as 
though the thoughts themselves, instead of the words 
which are their vehicles, were transfused through the 
senses ; eye, ear, heart, took them in, in that perfect 
form in which they were conceived. 



44 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



" Now, what is the secret of Miss Cushman's success 
in characters so widely differing from each other as Bi- 
anca, Lady Macbeth, and Rosalind ? It is earnestness. 
She is earnest in whatever she undertakes. She thinks 
nothing of individual self, but everything of that other 
self with which for the time she is identified, so that she 
becomes the very character which she represents ; and 
no actor or actress who does not possess this power 
can ever become great." 

At Bays water Miss Cushman studied Romeo, and her 
sister Susan, Juliet, and after acting in Southampton 
they began their engagement with this tragedy, Dec. 30, 
1845, at the Haymarket Theatre. 

At first there was trouble concerning some deviations 
from the usual manner of playing it, which Miss Cush- 
man insisted on. She was determined to follow the 
original Shakespeare. This was unusual, and the Eng- 
lish support were not willing to be led by what they, 
in the usual manner of their countrymen at that period, 
chose to term "American Indians ; " but the manager, 
Mr. Webster, supported Miss Cushman, and when she 
had made a grand success in her own way there was no 
more to be said. The play achieved what at that time 
was an almost unheard of popularity, and had a run of 
eighty nights in London. Naturally, after being thus 
sealed with the approbation of the metropolis, it was 
equally approved in the provinces. 

It is said, by those who knew Miss Cushman best, 
that the assumption of male characters was not wholly 
agreeable to her. During her long and hard service in 
the " utility business " she had often to act such parts, 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



45 



quite regardless of choice, and in so doing proved 
herself capable of that which she did later from love of 
her sister. She could give no prominent parts to 
Susan in most of the plays in which she appeared as 
leading lady ; but in " Romeo and Juliet " the value of 
their parts was equal, while she was able by her instruc- 
tion and support to place her sister at her very best, 
and in the result her self-sacrifice had its full reward. 
Of the press notices perhaps none was more valuable 
than that written by James Sheridan Knowles, which is 
given below : — 

" I witnessed with astonishment the Romeo of Miss 
Cushman. Unanimous and lavish as were the enco- 
miums of the London press, I was not prepared for 
such a triumph of pure genius. You recollect, per- 
haps, Kean's third act of " Othello." Did you ever 
expect to see anything like it again ? I never did ; 
and yet I saw as great a thing last Wednesday night in 
Romeo's scene with the Friar, after the sentence of 
banishment, — quite as great ! I am almost tempted to 
go further. It was a scene of topmost passion ; not 
simulated passion, — no such thing ; real, palpably 
real. The genuine heart-storm was on, — on in wildest 
fitfulness of fury ; and I listened and gazed and held 
my breath, while my blood ran hot and cold. I am 
sure it must have been the case with every one in the 
house ; but I was all absorbed in Romeo, till a thunder 
of applause recalled me to myself. I particularize this 
scene because it is the most powerful, but every scene 
exhibited the same truthfulness. The first scene with 
Juliet, for instance, admirably personated by her beau- 



46 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

tiful sister, was exquisitely faithful ; the eye, the tone, 
the general bearing, — everything attesting the lover 
smit to the core at first sight, and shrinkingly and fal- 
teringly endeavoring, with the aid of palm and eye and 
tongue, to break his passion to his idol. My heart 
and mind are so full of this extraordinary, most extra- 
ordinary performance, that I know not where to stop 
or how to go on. Throughout it was a triumph equal 
to the proudest of those which I used to witness years 
ago, and for a repetition of which I have looked in 
vain till now. There is no trick in Miss Cushman's 
performance ; no thought, no interest, no feeling, seems 
to actuate her, except what might be looked for in 
Romeo himself, were Romeo reality." 

Still another is valuable, because it analyzes more 
thoroughly her manner of " being Romeo : " 

"The glowing reality and completeness of Miss 
Cushman's performance perhaps produces the strength 
of the impression with which she sends us away. The 
character, instead of being shown to us in a heap of 
disjecta me??ibra, is exhibited by her in a powerful light 
which at once displays the proportions and the beauty 
of the poet's conception. It is as if a noble symphony, 
distorted and rendered unmeaning by inefficient con- 
ductors, had suddenly been performed under the hand 
of one who knew in what time the composer intended 
it should be taken. Yet this wonderful completeness, 
though it may produce upon the public the effect of all 
high art, that of concealing the means by which it is 
obtained, ought not to render the critic unmindful of 
Miss Cushman's labors in detail. These should be 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 47 

pointed out, not to diminish, but on the contrary to 
increase by explaining, her triumph ; for had her 
superb conception not been seconded by the utmost 
exactitude of execution, the effect would have failed. 
Of this, however, there was no lack, nor is it for us to 
estimate the pains of a process by which so finished a 
work was achieved. It is for us merely to record that 
no symptoms of carelessness or haste appeared, no sen- 
timent was slurred over or half comprehended, no pas- 
sage slighted as of small importance. The intensity 
with which the actress has seized the character is 
grounded upon too reverent an appreciation of its 
creator's genius to allow her to sit in judgment on the 
means he has chosen for the accomplishment of his 
own purpose. The restoration of the plot and text of 
Shakespeare (thankfully as we receive it) is only a part 
of this demonstration of the honor in which he is held 
by the most admirable of his modern illustrators. It 
breathes through every line of the performance. 

" All Miss Cushman's stage business is founded upon 
intellectual ideas, and not upon conventionalisms ; but 
it is also most effective in a theatrical light. Her walk 
and attitudes are graceful ; the manner in which the 
courtesy of the stage is given is very high-bred ; her 
fencing is better than skilful, because it is appropriate. 
Tybalt is struck dead, as lightning strikes the pine ; 
one blow beats down his guard, and one lunge closes 
the fray ; indignation has for a moment the soul of 
Romeo. With Paris there is more display of swords- 
manship ; he falls by the hand of the lover, when ' as 
fixed, but far too tranquil for despair ' ; and the gestures, 



48 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

eloquent as words, in the Garden scene, and the piteous 
lingering over the body of Juliet, are portions of the 
performance which are not likely to pass away from 
the memory of the spectator, who was compelled in the 
former to share the lover's enthusiasm, in the latter his 
agony." 

After this successful winter in London (1846) the 
sisters fulfilled a six weeks' engagement in Dublin, and 
finished the season with a few nights in provincial 
towns. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



49 



CHAPTER V. 
1847-1849. 

In the spring of 1847 the sisters made a provincial 
tour, and again acted six weeks in Dublin, where Miss 
Cushman was always a favorite. She found something 
that especially appealed to her in the genuine Irish 
impulsiveness, and was able quickly to kindle a respon- 
sive sympathy in Irish audiences. She enjoyed the wit 
of this people, and had a fund of amusing anecdote of 
her experiences among them, with which she not infre- 
quently entertained her friends in private — for she told 
stories well, and loved to tell them ; and sometimes, 
for the select few, she added Irish songs, among which 
Lover's " Father Molloy " was a great favorite. 

After Dublin, Miss Cushman and her sister acted in 
many of the principal towns throughout Great Britain, 
and finally at Liverpool, where they visited Seaforth 
Hall, the home of Mr. James Muspratt, whose son Miss 
Susan Cushman (or Mrs. Merriman) married on March 
9, 1848. 

Of this provincial tour I shall give no critiques, since 
they would be but a repetition of those of the London 
press. Miss Cushman won hosts of admirers among 
the general public, and many warm friends among those 
whom she met in private. 



50 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



Before her sister's marriage they visited Paris, and 
Miss Cushman there became acquainted with Henry 
F. Chorley, Mrs. Hemans's biographer, and the musical 
critic of the Atheruzum. He began very soon to talk 
and write to her of his play, "The Duchess Elinor," in 
which Miss Cushman took the principal character, but 
not until six or seven years later. It will be spoken of 
in its proper place ; I refer to it here because it is so 
good an illustration of the continuance in a persistent 
struggle which is so often necessary before an author 
can attain a public hearing. It also shows the faithful- 
ness of Miss Cushman's friendship, for she ever held 
herself ready to do her best for Mr. Chorley's heroine. 

It is not inappropriate to give here one of the many 
notices which appeared on the occasion of Miss Susan 
Cushman's marriage. The following is from the Theat- 
rical Journal : — 

" In the United States, where Miss Susan Cushman 
passed the first six years of her professional life, she was 
well known as an artist of taste and judgment, and a 
highly accomplished woman. Her first appearance was 
at the Park Theatre, New York, in April, 1837, as Laura 
Castelli, in Mr. Epes Sargent's play, ' The Genoese : ' 
and so immediate was her success, that she was on the 
fourth night cast for Desdemona, to the Othello of Mr. 
VandenhorT, who was then starring in America. From 
New York she went to Philadelphia and played for 
some time with Mr. Ranger, now of the Haymarket 
Theatre, London. During her brief career she suc- 
cessively played the 'juvenile tragedy' and 'genteel 
comedy ' business, as it is theatrically termed, to Mr. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



51 



James Wallack, Mr. Forrest, and Mr. Macready ; and 
was the representative, in Philadelphia and New York, 
of the principal female parts of most of our recent 
dramas, — Grace Harkaway to her sister's Lady Gay 
Spanker, Pauline in the ' Lady of Lyons,' Flore7itine 
in 'Time Works Wonders,' yulie de Mortemar, Lady 
Alice Hawthorn, and Satan in Paris ! The last of 
these characters had a remarkable triumph, and was 
played by her for many successive nights. 

" In the ' Happy Man,' and in most of poor Power's 
best pieces, that delightful comedian has often declared 
that he never had a more clever supporter than Miss 
Cushman, who displayed a racy humor and a love of 
fun seldom looked for among the Juliets and Desde- 
monas of the stage. The former character was not one 
of this lady's American parts [?], but since her arrival 
in England she has actually performed that one charac- 
ter of Juliet upwards of two hundred nights. 11 

The editor of the Sun paid her a delicate compli- 
ment when he said that she was " the most lady-like 
representative of the most lady-like character that 
Shakespeare ever drew." 

During the year 1848 Miss Charlotte Cushman did 
not act as constantly as she had done before this time. 
She made several excursions to different parts of Eng- 
land, and appeared as Queen Katheri?ie on the occasion 
of a benefit of Mr. Macready's at the Drury Lane Thea- 
tre on July 10, when " Henry VIII." and the "Jealous 
Wife " were acted. In " Macready's Diary" we read 
in a foot-note, by the Editor : — 

" This night's performance at Drury Lane Theatre 



52 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



was given by the special command of the Queen, and 
for Macready's benefit on the occasion of his ap- 
proaching departure for America. The Queen Dow- 
ager, the Duchesses of Kent and Cambridge, and other 
members of the royal family were present, together 
with many representatives of political life, of art, and 
of literature." 

Macready himself wrote : " On going to the stage, 
indeed, as it appeared from the beginning of the an- 
them, an organized disturbance, similar to that got up 
for the expulsion of the French actors, was violently 
persisted in by a few persons in the pit and the gal- 
leries. My reception was very great, and the house, 
with her Majesty and the Prince in state, was most 
brilliant. The noise continued through the scene ; 
and in the next, wishing to ascertain the nature of the 
disturbance, I sent to ask leave to address the audi- 
ence. The Queen granted it ; and I told the galleries 
that, understanding they were incommoded for want 
of room, I had to assure them that, happy as I had 
been in receiving favors from them for many years, 
they would now add to my obligations by receiving 
their money and leaving the theatre. Applause but 
not tranquillity ensued, and it was only in the Banquet 
scene that the play began to be heard. I took great 
pains, both in Cardinal Wolsey and in Mr. Oakley. 
The Queen left at the end of ' The Jealous Wife,' and 
I was called on and most warmly greeted." 

This is no place to comment upon tins singular be- 
havior of the British public in the presence of her Maj- 
esty, but it must have seemed odd to Miss Cushman. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



53 



The next day Macready published a card of thanks 
to Miss Cushman and others who had assisted him. 
It was certainly a great honor for an American actress 
to be cast in the leading part on such an occasion ; 
and yet, in spite of all her triumphs, at times, all 
through Miss Cushman's life, she seemed to distrust 
herself. It was perhaps a secret of the continuous 
strength she showed, that she was never quite satisfied, 
and always anxious to exceed what might reasonably 
be expected of her. She always regretted the want of 
early systematic training, and prized the opportunity of 
seeing great actors. Of Rachel she wrote : " I used 
to look on in a perfect rapture of wonder and admira- 
tion at her unapproachable art ; and often, as I left the 
theatre, and compared my own acting with hers, de- 
spair took possession of me, and a mad impulse to end 
life and effort together." 

Her reverence and love for her art can in no way be 
so well told as in her own words : " I think I love and 
revere all arts equally, only putting my own just above 
the others, because in it I recognize the union and cul- 
mination of all. To me it seems as if when God con- 
ceived the world, that was Poetry ; he formed it, and 
that was Sculpture ; he colored it, and that was Paint- 
ing; and then, crowning work of all, he peopled it 
with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, 
eternal Drama." 

Having referred to Miss Cushman's admiration of 
Rachel, I will here quote a part of a very interesting 
paper, written by Madame de Marguerites, which 
appeared in Sharpens London journal in 1852, 



54 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



entitled " Mademoiselle Rachel and Miss Cush- 
man : " — 

" It is impossible, in witnessing the performance of 
Charlotte Cushman, not to be reminded of Rachel ; 
and though in many things they are dissimilar, yet the 
effect of their appearance is the same, — riveting the 
attention and interesting the mind from the first mo- 
ment they come before you. The influence of that 
earnest and steady glance they both possess hushes 
at once to silence every trivial thought j then the deep 
tones, conveying a meaning in each syllable, arouse 
the elevated instincts of our nature ; an awe, far above 
that felt for earthly potentates, comes over us ; uncon- 
sciously the memory of heroic deeds, lifting us far 
above the dross of the wearing world, fills our soul. 
With eye uplifted, heart expanded, nerved to generous 
impulses alone, we feel, we recognize, that we are in 
the presence of genius, — genius that came from 
Heaven, but now rarely seen in a world possessed by 
a small, well-educated, and self-satisfied array of petty 
talent. . . . Both Rachel and Cushman, endowed 
with a strong will as well as high genius, have ob- 
tained the place they hold by long and arduous strug- 
gles. Neither possesses the one element to woman's 
celebrity, — personal beauty. ... As a whole, per- 
haps, Rachel and Miss Cushman would not act a play 
alike. They are of different countries, have different 
educations, different associations ; but there are touches 
of the same passions which, though in different dramas, 
are so much alike as to be almost miraculous. In vain 
the Atlantic divides and countries differ ; genius knows 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN'. 



55 



no limits and but one language, — that of truth and 
inspiration. 

" There is a play in which Miss Cushman rarely ap- 
pears, and perhaps for many reasons. As a whole the 
play is unsuited to her. This play is ' Love.' ... In 
the scene where the Countess reveals her love to Huon, 
Miss Cushman attains the very highest and most re- 
fined range of art. That our feelings are not outraged, 
our habitual associations shocked, — but that, on the 
contrary, all our sympathies are aroused, our respect 
and pity enlisted for this woman who o'ersteps the 
modesty of nature, — is owing to the thorough sweet- 
ness and truth of the actress, to the tender delicacy 
she infuses into this one cry of a passion long pent up 
in a proud and bursting heart. So in ' Phedre ' — the 
revolting character of the scene, where she reveals her 
passion to Hypolitus, is lost in the struggling feelings 
of latent modesty and rising remorse which Rachel in- 
fuses into the bold declaration which, almost in spite of 
a better nature, seems to fall from her lips. 

" Phedre was a heathen heroine, and intended by 
Euripides and Racine to appeal to all our compassion 
as a victim of the vengeance of the gods ; therefore 
Rachel has profoundly studied tradition and history in 
showing the struggle between the woman and the re- 
lentless fate which hurries her on, though she has en- 
tirely swerved from stage tradition (that which has 
clogged and crushed so many aspirations) in not mak- 
ing this scene from end to end one whirlwind of pas- 
sion. Here, again, Charlotte Cushman has had the 
same inspiration, though it assumes a different form. 



56 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



Pride, the pride of woman and high birth, combine 
to make the tender avowal difficult. Miss Cushman's re- 
serve of manner, — almost entire absence of gesture, — 
while her words are warm and gushing; the utter 
shame which bids her, when she ceases, bury her wo- 
man's blushes in her hands, — are all such minute yet 
masterly touches which render the conception of the 
scene one of the great proofs of her genius and her ver- 
satility. That the mind which could conceive the fierce 
heroism of Meg Merrilies, and make the audience 
quail beneath her wild fury, should conceive, trace, and 
impersonate the holiest and gentlest, yet the tenderest 
of woman's sentiments, is, even in the annals of the 
gifted, remarkable. 

" But people now-a-days go to see a play to learn the 
plot, to wait for one or two grand points and effects ; 
not to follow closely each delineation of the passions 
before them, as all contributing and leading to the catas- 
trophe, and testing and displaying the profound study 
and genius of the artist. In this has Rachel had less to 
contend with than the American actress. She appeals 
to an audience in whom, from the highest to the lowest, 
the dramatic taste is inherent, — an impulsive, imagi- 
native and passionate people, ever ready to identify 
themselves with the drama, and capable of concentrat- 
ing their attention exclusively on the characters and 
scenes before them. She acts, too, before an audience 
educated to attach importance to dramatic art as per- 
petuating the memory of glorious deeds, cultivating 
poetry and eloquence by rendering the flowers of lan- 
guage familiar, and rousing the better feelings of our 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



57 



nature by appealing to our sensibilities, our intellect, 
and our hearts. She, too, plays to critics deep-learned 
in history, deep-skilled in metaphysical analysis, — crit- 
ics who have studied art and are there to guide or 
restrain, critics whose art has a mission as high and 
distinguished as that of the artist himself. . . . 

" But Charlotte Cushman, though she knows that but 
the louder tones of her voice will reach the masses, 
plays as though the whole artistic world were listening. 
Led on by genius, she loses sight of others' approval, 
and plays as she is inspired. Both Rachel and Char- 
lotte Cushman have left tradition far behind them, 
for often they have found tradition at variance with 
feeling and truth. 

"To follow both Rachel and Charlotte Cushman 
through all their impersonations would be too long an 
indulgence. One more example of the resemblance of 
their instincts, and we have done. Again the example 
is in ' Phedre,' — the dying scene as contrasted with 
that of Katherine of Aragon, in ' Henry VIII.,' — and 
the death- scene is the most impressive of both plays. 
Katherme the Queen, oppressed by persecution, worn 
by slow malady, the lines of age and death marked on 
every feature of her face, is slowly borne into our pres- 
ence. Those who have stood beside the death-bed of 
a beloved parent, and watched the slow approach of 
that crisis which is forever to end all sufferings, will in- 
stantly recall that hour when they watched the expiring: 
Queen before them. The languid head seeking the 
support of the pillow, the husky voice, the uneasy move- 
ments of the hands, the pale and hollow cheek, are all 



58 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



true, too true, to nature. Thus Rachel in 'Phedre,' 
arrested, in the full force of youth and health, by the 
poison which circulates in her veins, her eye already 
glazing, her cheek pallid, her voice all changed, with 
faltering step is led on to die. 

"Both the Christian and the heathen Queen have 
done with the world ; what they have to say to those 
around is but a last duty in which they take no part ; 
but one thought at last recalls the past to both. With 
the holy and resigned Christian woman, whose duties 
and affections had united, it is the remembrance of her 
child which animates the worn-out frame ; a smile like 
a mild moon-beam once more plays over those features, 
and the voice, though plaintive, is yet sweet and clear ; 
yet 't is but for a moment, and then she returns her 
thoughts to heaven, her mind to eternal rest. 

" So Phedre, exhausted by passion, tortured by bod- 
ily pain, falters out slowly, word by word, the confes- 
sion of her passion and her crime ; but as she speaks, 
her thoughts recur to that time when, sheltered by deep 
woods, she watched the swift car of Hypolitus flying 
before her admiring gaze ; then, with this passion which 
has been her fate, again the eye kindles, again the 
voice grows firm and loud, her strength returns ; and, 
following still her visions, with extended arm, nostrils 
dilated, and glance of fire, she rises from her chair. 
But the vision fades, the fictitious powers vanish, and 
she falls exhausted back to her place, in agony and 
despair, to give to the infernal gods her unquiet 
spirit. 

" How like, and yet how different, is the same thought 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



59 



which, moulded to the fashion of the character and 
circumstance, inspired both these women of genius ! 
Time will scarcely mar any of the qualities of either of 
these great actresses. Europe has not tired of Rachel, 
and both America and Europe are always ready to wel- 
come Miss Cushman; but when years and years are 
gone by, they will still be remembered, because the im- 
pression, on seeing both, is like an event of one's life ; 
and as such will be related by the old to the younger, 
and thus their genius will live forever." 

We may infer that Miss Cushman had doubted the 
wisdom of her acting Queen Katherine, from a note 
written to her by Chorley in October of the previous 
year (1847). He said : — 

" Had I not found your note on coming home from 
the theatre, I must have written to you after the Queen 
Katherine, which I went to see quietly. You are 
wholly wrong to fancy that the part does not do you 
good, and you good to the part. What will you say 
when I tell you that it has given me a higher idea of 
your power than any I have yet seen you act ? I like 
it all, — conception, execution, everything. I like the 
plainness, the simplicity, and the utter absence of all 
strain or solemnity. 

" You know I am difficult, and little given to prais- 
ing any one. Most of all was I delighted to hear how 
your level voice, when not forced, tells, and tells 
thoroughly. Now believe I don't say this to put you in 
good humor, or for any other reason than because it is 
honest and must come ! 

" As for the critics, remember that from time imme- 



60 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

morial they have been always, at first, unjust to new 
and natural readings. The house shows how little 
harm or good they do, and of its humor there was no 
doubt; though people who have been wiping their 
eyes on apricot-colored bonnet-strings, as I saw one 
young lady of nature doing, can't find time or coolness 
to applaud anything as they ought. In short, I was 
pleased, much pleased, and shall tell you yet more 
about the same when I see you ; and I am truly glad 
for your own sake that you have played the part." 

About a year later, in August, 1849, Miss Cushman 
sailed for the United States. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. £ x 



CHAPTER VI. 
1849-1852. 

Miss Cushman was heartily welcomed on her return 
to America. Her personal friends were proud of the 
way in which her noble and lovable character had been 
developed, and the public were proud that one of our 
countrywomen could thus command the admiration 
and praise of the British people and the British press, — 
a woman, too, whose whole education and dramatic 
experience had been acquired in America. 

Her reappearance was made in the character of 
Mrs. Haller, on Oct. 8, 1849, at tne Broadway The- 
atre, New York, under the management of Mr. E. A. 
Marshall. Mr. Charles Walter Couldock* had come 
from England to support Miss Cushman, and made 
his first appearance in this country as The Stranger. 

Miss Cushman was enthusiastically received, and 
throughout this engagement, which lasted until Oc- 
tober 27, she had large and appreciative houses. 
Her duties were not light, for in those few nights she 
acted Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Mariana, Julia, Queen 

* C. W. Couldock was born in London, April 26, 1815. He became 
an actor when twenty years old. He was the original Abel Murcott, in 
" Our American Cousin," at Laura Keene's Theatre in 1858. He has 
made a good American reputation, and is an excellent serious actor. 



62 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Katherine, Juliana, Beatrice, Mrs. Simpson, and Meg 
Merrilies. This last personation, which was so essen- 
tially the creation of Miss Cushman's genius, was 
everywhere very popular, and it is a matter of interest 
now to read and compare the testimony of various 
writers and critics concerning it. 

William Winter says of it : — 

" As an actress Miss Cushman was best in tragedy, 
whether lurid or pathetic, and in sombre melodrama. 
Theatrical history will probably associate her name 
more intimately with Meg Merrilies than with any 
other character. This production was unique. It 
embodied physical misery, wandering reason, delirious 
imagination, and the wasted tenderness of a loving, 
broken heart ; and it was tinted with the most graphic 
colors of romance. The art-method by which it was 
projected was peculiar in this, — that it disregarded 
probability, and addressed itself to the imaginative 
perception. When Meg Merrilies sprang forth in the 
moonlight, and stood, with towering figure and ex- 
tended arms, tense, rigid, and terribly beautiful, glaring 
on the form of Harry Bertram, the spectator saw a 
creature of the ideal world and not of earth. This 
conception may have been in the brain of Sir Walter 
Scott ; it was never on his page. Miss Cushman could 
give free rein to her frenzy in this character, and that 
was why she loved it and excelled in it, and was able 
by means of it to reveal herself so amply and dis- 
tinctly to the public mind. What she thus revealed 
was a power of passionate emotion as swift as the 
lightning and as wild as the gale, — an individuality 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



63 



fraught with pathos, romance, tenderness, grandeur, 
the deep knowledge of grief, and the royal strength of 
endurance. Her Meg Merrilies was not her greatest 
work, but it was her most startling and effective one, 
because it was the most sudden and brilliant illumina- 
tion of her being." 

Henry Morley, the English author, and editor of the 
London Examiner, wrote : — 

" Miss Cushman's melodramatic Meg Merrilies has 
quite as indisputably the attributes of genius about it 
as any piece of poetry or tragedy could have. Such 
is her power over the intention and feeling of the part 
that the mere words of it become a secondary matter. 
It is the figure, the gait, the look, the tone, by which 
she puts beauty and passion into language the most 
indifferent. When these mere artifices are continued 
through a series of scenes, a certain strain becomes 
apparent, and the effect is not wholly agreeable. 
Nevertheless it is something to see what the unassisted 
resources of acting may achieve with the mere idea of 
a fine part, stripped of fine language, unclothed, as it 
were, in words. The human tenderness blending with 
that Eastern picturesqueness of gesture, the fine senti- 
ment breaking out from beneath that heavy feebleness 
and clumsiness of old age, are wonderfully startling." 

From Mr. H. D. Stone's " Personal Recollections of 
the Drama " we quote : — 

" But the Meg Merrilies of Miss Cushman is the most 
positively electrical and fearfully grand of all her inim- 
itable personations. Miss Cushman has made Meg 
Merrilies a specialty, — in fact, wholly, exclusively her 



64 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

own, and has no rival in it on either the American or 
British boards. Those who have once witnessed her 
in the ''Old Witch ' will have little desire to see any- 
other person, however eminent that person may be, in 
that peculiar role. It would seem as though, when he 
wrote ' Guy Mannering,' Sir Walter Scott must have had 
Charlotte Cushman in his mind's eye as the proper rep- 
resentative of old Meg." 

From Laurence Hutton's " Plays and Players : " — 

"As Nancy Sikes she made her first great hit; as 
Meg Merrilies, perhaps, she has appeared to greatest 
advantage, and in this part will she be most fondly 
remembered." 

Miss Jewsbury, the novelist, who was a friend of Miss 
Cushman, thus speaks of one of her visits to Manches- 
ter, and of her acting of Meg Merrilies : — 

" In Manchester she made many friends, quiet, domes- 
tic people, who regarded her with affection and respect. 
She was noble and generous, and gave help to whoever 
needed it to the utmost of her ability. As she said 
once of herself, 'she tried always to keep her prow 
turned towards good,' and I feel sure that this desire 
underlay the whole of her life. 

"... Of her acting in some of her characters I 
retain a vivid recollection. Her Meg Merrilies, and 
that strange, silent spring to the middle of the stage, 
which was her entrance on it, can never be forgotten ; 
nor the tones of her voice, which seemed to come from 
another world. Madame Vestris said that ' Meg Merri- 
lies made her turn cold.' The song she crooned in the 
part was exactly as Meg would have given it, and sug- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



65 



gested no other person and no acting. Indeed, all her 
characters were singularly true and individual. She 
never seemed to display herself in her acting." 

The costume which Miss Cushman wore in Meg Mer- 
rilies, and her whole make-up, was as much her own as 
her rendering of the character. It seemed to be an 
unmeaning and incongruous collection of strange parts, 
never intended to form a whole ; but when, by the fitly 
joining together which Miss Cushman effected (by 
some means unknown to any one but herself) , it ap- 
peared in its entirety, it was full of subtle meaning. It 
told of all the old gypsy had endured, — the wind and 
storm, the cold and hardship ; all were symbolized in 
that remarkable dress with its dilapidated head-gear. 
And yet, poor as it was, there was something in that 
head-dress, or in the way it was worn, that suggested a 
supernatural force, a genuine, untamed queenliness. 

The stick used by Miss Cushman was not " a goodly 
sloe-thorn cudgel," but a "property," and provided 
for each engagement when required ; there was there- 
fore an opportunity afforded for the gratification of 
curiosity-collectors. Frequently Miss Cushman was 
asked to give the stick she had used to some admirer, 
and it would not be strange if many of those relics still 
hold a place of honor in various collections throughout 
the land. The one she last carried in New York is at 
Villa Cushman, her late home at Newport. 

On Dec. 24, 1849, Miss Cushman again appeared at 
the Broadway Theatre, New York, as Julia, in the 
" Hunchback." On Jan. 5, 1850, she acted Bianca, in 
"Fazio," the character in which she had made her 



66 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

debut in London, and it was as enthusiastically received 
in New York as in the former city. Her personation 
of frenzied jealousy was remarkable for its power, while 
her touching and subdued misery, as well as her self- 
accusation at the end of the Trial scene, were equally 
worthy of admiration. In the scene where Fazio is led 
away she touched the very topmost limit of her power. 
When the fatal "bell first sounded she stood rigid, fixed 
in form and gaze, unconsciously peering into vacancy. 
Even when Fazio spoke tenderly to her she was not 
roused. The bell tolled again and again ; she heard it 
not, and he was led away. At last the sound reached 
her ear ; for one swift moment she looked around, and 
in that flash of thought understood all that had hap- 
pened ; and before another moment could add its 
misery she fell like some helpless creature o'ertaken by 
the lightning-shaft. Her fall was indescribable ; it told 
fully of the utter wreck and ruin of her all. Her exit 
was another miracle of acting ; no one can say how she 
moved. She did not walk, nor creep, nor drag herself 
along ; she seemed to go without motive-power ; and as 
she passed from sight the spectator felt as though an 
invisible hand had drawn her out into a gulf of deep 
despair. 

During the winter of 1850 she made a long and suc- 
cessful Southern tour, and acted at New Orleans, Sa- 
vannah, Charleston, Washington, Baltimore, and Phila- 
delphia, — everywhere to crowded houses, which were 
enthusiastic in their appreciation of her powers. 

This year (1850) was a very busy one. On May 
13 she acted Romeo at the Astor Place Opera House, 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. $y 

New York, with Miss Fanny Wallack as Juliet, and 
Mr. Couldock as Mercutio. In writing of her assump- 
tion of male characters, Mr. Hutton, in " Plays and 
Players," says : — 

" Romeo, Claude Melnotte, Cardinal Wolsey, and 
Hamlet are among the most prominent of the male 
parts she has played. Her Cardinal Wolsey, in which 
she did not appear until 1858, was a most remarkable 
performance. She is no doubt the only woman who has 
had the courage and the ability to undertake it. Another 
marvellous assumption of hers was Romeo. She was 
earnest, intense, and natural. The constitutional sus- 
ceptibility of Romeo's character was depicted by her in 
its boldest relief, — a particular phase of the nature of 
the young Montague, which no male actor, unless he 
were a mere youth, could efficiently and satisfactorily 
portray. 

" In the ' Lady of Lyons ' she has played the Widow 
Melnotte (she was the original Widow Melnotte in New 
York) , Pauline, and Claude. She acquired high repute 
for her Claude in England, and drew crowded houses 
at the Old Broadway, in 1850, where she first assumed 
it. The public seemed greatly to relish the earnest and 
truthful manner in which she rendered the familiar 
and celebrated character. It was said, over twenty- five 
years ago, th?t while women ordinarily fail when they 
assume male parts, Miss Cushman always succeeds." 

The following anecdote illustrates Miss Cushman's 
decision and nerve. At the National Theatre, Boston, 
during the season of 1851-52, as she was playing 
Romeo to the Juliet of Miss Anderton, in the midst of 



68 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 

one of the most romantic passages between the lovers, 
some person in the house sneezed in such a manner as 
to attract the attention of the whole audience, and every 
one knew that the sneeze was artificial and derisive. 
Miss Cushman instantly stopped the dialogue, and led 
Miss Anderton off the stage, as a cavalier might lead a 
lady from the place where an insult had been offered her. 
She then returned to the footlights and said in a clear, 
firm voice, " Some man must put that person out, or I 
shall be obliged to do it myself." The fellow was taken 
away ; the audience rose en masse and gave three cheers 
for Miss Cushman, who recalled her companion and 
proceeded with the play as if nothing had happened. 

On the ioth of June she acted Meg Merrilies at 
Niblo's Garden, New York, and then took six weeks 
from her engagements to go to England to see a friend 
who was seriously ill. On the morning of August 30 
she arrived again in New York, and- the same evening 
appeared at Niblo's as Meg Merrilies ■, closing the season 
the following night as Mrs. Haller. In October she 
filled another engagement at the Broadway Theatre, 
ending on the 26th. After an arduous winter and spring, 
during which she acted in several cities, she took a 
benefit at the Broadway Theatre in June, 185 1, and on 
that occasion acted Queen Katherine and Lady Gay 
Spanker. 

I give here an anecdote which was related to me by 
one of the actors who saw the occurrence : — 

At a rehearsal for " Guy Mannering " one morning 
Miss Cushman was much disturbed by the singers in a 
concerted piece failing in the time. She appealed to 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



69 



the leader of the orchestra, who was playing a violin, and 
asked that he should use his baton. Again the piece 
was rehearsed and again failed ; a second time she in- 
sisted that Mr. should relinquish his violin and beat 

the time clear through ; a third time the singing went 
on and with little improvement. Just as it was ended 
Miss Cushman saw that the leader was again busy with 
his bow. Then she walked down to the footlights, 
reached over and took the offending violin and bow into 
her own possession, and marched up and down the stage 
using it herself. The piece was rehearsed again ; the 
baton was kept to its work, and so was the fiddle in Miss 
Cushman's hands, though we cannot say that she played 
a tune ; and this time all went well. 

In the spring of 1852 Miss Cushman announced her 
determination to retire from the stage. She took leave 
of the Boston public in March, and appeared for her 
last engagement, at the Broadway in New York, in May, 
acting Meg Merrilies on her last night. 

The frequent repetition of Miss Cushman's farewells 
to the stage has been the occasion of much humorous 
remark and some censure. Mr. Winter spoke of this 
as follows, at the time of her death : — 

" It is not difficult to understand (when we consider 
that Miss Cushman was a woman of weird genius, som- 
bre imagination, great sensibility, and celibate condi- 
tion ; that she had been victorious by force rather than 
by sweetness ; that for her conscientious mind and 
highly nervous organization the practice of the dra- 
matic art was terribly earnest, and that frequently she 
was the victim of disease) in what way she often came 



70 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



to believe that the limit of her labor was reached, that 
the end of her life was near, and that her retirement 
from the public view was needful. With natures that 
see widely and feel deeply, such despondent views of 
personal destiny and worldly affairs are not unusual. 
Thackeray, long before he wrote ' The Newcomes,' 
said of himself that his work was done and he would 
accomplish no more. In the several farewells that she 
took of the stage Miss Cushman acted like a woman, 
and precisely like the woman that she was ; and the 
censors who have misjudged her upon this point have 
done so, we think, through failing to consider the prob- 
able effect on conduct of that element of feminine 
weakness — that unsatisfied and therefore forlorn ten- 
derness of woman's heart — which was the core of her 
rugged and stalwart nature. All of her adieus were sin- 
cere. None of them until now was final or possible. 
Let us bring to the coffin of this great genius, dead 
and at rest after such trials and such anguish, not only 
the gentleness of charitable judgment, but the justice of 
intelligent appreciation." 

This seems fully and justly to account for what, under 
other circumstances and in another person, would fur- 
nish ground for severity of judgment. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ji 



CHAPTER VII. 

1852-1860. 

Miss Cushman passed the summer and early autumn 
of 1852 at Liverpool with Mrs. Muspratt, made a visit 
to the Isle of Wight, and in October went to Rome 
with a party of friends, including Miss Harriet Hosmer 
and Mrs. Lippincott ("Grace Greenwood"). She had 
an agreeable winter, and in the spring, after visiting 
Naples, Leghorn, and Florence, returned by way of 
the Italian lakes, Switzerland, and Paris, to England. 
She then passed some time at Great Malvern, to which 
place she often went for rest and to profit by the water- 
treatment. 

In December, 1853, she again acted in Liverpool, 
and during the next three months, in London. It was 
in March, 1854, that Chorley's " Duchess Elinor " was 
brought out at the Haymarket Theatre. Mr. Vanden- 
horT, who was then acting there, had a part in the play. 
He says, in his " Note-Book," that it had great literary 
merit, and that Miss Cushman thought her part in it a 
fine one, and had counted on it for a new success. 
The piece was endured the first night ; but on the sec- 
ond a volley of hisses, in the fifth act, ended the mat- 
ter, and consigned it to oblivion. 



72 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



In April she appeared again in Liverpool, and in 
May in London, Birmingham, and Sheffield. In June 
she went to Paris, but was recalled to England on ac- 
count of the illness and death of her little niece, Ida 
Muspratt. 

The summer was passed in her usual manner when 
in Great Britain, and in September she was again upon 
the stage, opening her season in Dublin, and appearing 
in many provincial cities. In December of this year I 
find the first mention of Miss Cushman as a reader. 
It was upon the occasion of her dining with the Duke 
of Devonshire at Brighton, when she read " Henry 
VIII." to the Duke and his guests. 

In January, 1855, Miss Cushman established herself 
in a house in London, where she received many friends, 
and assumed that social position which her character 
and genius had won for her and entitled her to hold. 

Miss Cushman had a quick and ready sympathy with 
whatever was going on around her. This attribute fitted 
her to be a friend to people of all ages and positions. 
She was passionately fond of children, and very rich in the 
power to amuse and entertain them. She called herself 
the " big mamma " of the children of her own family, and 
never considered anything that it was in her power to do 
for them as a waste of time or trouble, — no, nor even a 
task, if only they were happy. She was always keenly 
interested in those about to begin the real work of life, 
and the sympathy and kindliness which she manifested 
towards young people placed them at ease with her. 
She drew them out, and had the tact to make them say 
the best that was in them ; and she was much in the 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 73 

habit of generously aiding them to make a beginning in 
study and preparation for their chosen path in life. 

With people of her own age she was always welcome 
and greatly beloved. There was no apparent self- 
assertion about her, and yet by some subtle quality 
— seemingly a part of herself and not a cultivated 
characteristic — she exercised a sort of spell upon a 
number of individuals as easily as upon one, and in 
whatever company she found herself she was emphati- 
cally the person present. This may have arisen in part 
from the peculiarity of her manner, which was cer- 
tainly always more or less dramatic, and at times purely 
tragic. It was especially noticeable when she met a 
friend ; she seemed to make a sort of stage entrance ; 
then, as she was interested in the conversation, she be- 
came more simple and natural, and in all cases, when 
she wished to please, she succeeded perfectly. 

Her power to attract the admiration and to gain the 
affection of women was remarkable. One lady has told 
me of the wonderful impression which Miss Cushman 
produced upon her at their first meeting. She said : 
" Dearly as I loved my mother and my home, if Miss 
Cushman had asked me that day to go with her and be 
her slave, without even going back to say farewell to my 
friends, I should have consented. I would have given 
my life for her ; and though I did not realize it, I was 
in such a state of excitement that, after leaving her, I 
burst into tears the moment another person addressed 
me, and, so to speak, broke the spell under which she 
had laid me." The lady added that it was not until 
years had passed, and she had known Miss Cushman 



74 



CJ7AXL0TTE CUSHMAN. 



very well, and life had brought many other associations 
and cares to her, that she could resist this peculiar in- 
fluence whenever she met the great actress. 

In this connection I quote from an article which 
appeared in the Boston Advertiser shortly after Miss 
Cushman's death : — 

" Miss Cushman possessed in a remarkable degree the 
power of attaching women to her. They loved her with 
utter devotion, and she repaid their love with the wealth 
of her great warm heart. Young girls gave her genuine 
hero-worship, which she received with a gracious kind- 
ness, that neither encouraged the worship nor wounded 
the worshipper ; mature women loved and trusted her 
to the last hour of her life. She had the perfect ser- 
vice of the purest friendship ; and beyond that, num- 
bers of noble women waiting to give and receive 
unfailing sympathy and affection. Miss Cushman's 
triumphs have been great, but the greatest of these was 
the character that won such friends." 

She had also that capacity, so valuable in a hostess, 
of perceiving all that was occurring, and keeping her- 
self au courant with several things at the same moment. 
I may illustrate this by saying that upon one occasion, 
when she was holding an important conversation with 
a gentleman who related the circumstance to me, a 
little girl, who was a great favorite with her, was play- 
ing a game at a table in the room with another child. 
Miss Cushman was interested to have her pet win ; and 
while she gave intelligent and thoughtful attention to 
the conversation, she at the same time followed the 
game so closely as to advise and caution the child 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



75 



from time to time, and guide her skilfully through it ; 
and yet the gentleman never felt for a moment that 
she was diverted from the matter of which they spoke. 
It is easy to understand how such a capacity must have 
aided her in accomplishing the vast amount of varied 
work which she did. 

There was a sense of repose about her, in the discus- 
sion of important matters, which was most agreeable to 
others. The gentleman above spoken of said : " To me 
she was the most reposeful woman that I ever knew. 
When one had conversed with her he felt that every- 
thing had been said ; not only that she, but that the 
person with whom she talked, had said all that belonged 
to the subject and the occasion." Considering such 
traits, it is easy to comprehend the devotion she re- 
ceived from her intimate associates, and the admiration 
she commanded in all who knew her. 

Her personal appearance and want of beauty has 
been frequently commented on, but when once in her 
presence this was forgotten. Certainly she lacked beauty 
of feature, and what is commonly termed gracefulness ; 
but her presence was at once genial and stately, and 
one soon forgot the form, and thought only of the 
expression of her face, which was ever changing, and 
depended much upon the effect of her eyes, which were 
remarkably fine. 

Many pictures have been made of Miss Cushman. 
At one time, in London, five different artists were paint- 
ing portraits of her ; but no likeness could ever repre- 
sent her satisfactorily, since it was the flexibility of her 
features, and the picturing of every passing emotion 



76 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

upon them, that made the face by which her friends 
and the public knew her. Thus it has resulted that 
portraits of her appear to be either sweet and weak or 
strong and hard, exaggerating always one or the other 
of her two most prominent characteristics, — tenderness 
and strength. 

To return to her life in London. She gave musical 
parties there which were very enjoyable ; and, on one 
occasion, when she entertained Ristori at dinner, paid 
her a very pretty compliment by having the whole affair 
as nearly like a dinner in Italy as possible, and wearing 
the Italian colors, red, green, and white, in her own 
dress. 

With all her private interests she continued her pro- 
fessional labors. In February, 1855, she again appeared 
in the provinces, and during that winter and spring she 
did an immense amount of work, ending her season in 
July. During the summer she visited the English lakes, 
and on October 1 acted at Newcastle, later at Sunder- 
land, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and so on, 
returning to London for a month at the Haymarket, 
and then going again to Sheffield, Wolverhampton, and 
Bristol. 

How few who look on the results of such a life ap- 
preciate all the labor that is required to produce them. 
At times Miss Cushman broke down and suffered in 
health and spirits. Her friends became anxious about 
her, and from such expressions as the following, quoted 
from one of Miss Jewsbury's letters, we can understand 
exactly what the reaction must have been when she had 
overtaxed even her great powers of endurance : — 



■■ 



V. 




CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



77 



" My dearest Child, — You are in a bad way just 
now, and no wonder ; you have had enough to drive to 
distraction a whole regiment of men, let alone women. 
But don't distress yourself too much in your own heart ; 
your depression and discouragement, your weariness 
and vexation of spirit, are in a great measure the result 
of all the superhuman exertions you have had to go 
through for the last few months. Living in London 
society does, under any circumstances, make one ex- 
quisitely sad, and you have had its essence, doubly and 
trebly distilled and powerful. . . . The life you have 
led, the success, the acclamations, the perfect glare of tri- 
umph in which you have moved for the last few months, 
are almost fabulous. No nervous system that was ever 
born of woman could stand it ; you are a perfect mira- 
cle in my eyes, but you are proving your mortality by 
suffering." 

In January, 1856, she began another arduous year, 
so much like the preceding that no account need be 
given of it until the autumn, when she went again to 
Rome ; and, though always busy, she did not act for 
some months. 

In September, 1857, she came to America, where she 
made her reappearance at Burton's New Theatre, New 
York, on the 28th of that month, as Bianca. During 
October she commenced a second engagement at this 
house, and on the 1 3th of November she acted Cardi- 
nal Wolsey ; she gave a masterly impersonation of the 
character, and added new laurels to the many she had 
won before. 

She remained in her own country about nine months, 



78 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



acting in many cities, and again took leave of the pub- 
lic at Niblo's Garden, New York, in an engagement 
commencing with " Henry VIII.," on June 21, 1858. 
She was supported by E. L. Davenport, John Gilbert, 
L. R. Shewell, Mrs. Abbott, Miss Ida Vernon, etc. 
During this engagement she acted Romeo to the Juliet 
of Miss Mary Devlin, who then made her New York 
debut.* Miss Cushman and Miss Devlin also appeared 
as Lady Gay Spanker and Grace, in " London Assur- 
ance," with Henry Placide, Brougham, and Blake as 
Sir Harcourt Courtly, Dazzle, and Meddle. 

Night after night the bills announced the final appear- 
ance of Miss Cushman, and still she stayed on. This 
was daily repeated from the 2d to the 7th of July, when 
she played Lady Macbeth and sailed almost immediately 
thereafter. 

What has been said of Miss Cushman's manner in 
private was true of her upon the stage ; that is, that at 
first, before she lost herself in her assumed character, 
and indeed always in the minor scenes, she was what is 
termed "stagy." She employed the angular motion, 
the stride, the start, the labored breathing, and the 
stilted declamation which are happily almost obsolete 
now. This manner was especially noticeable in " Mac- 
beth," and in the first scene with Macbeth Miss Cush- 
man gave full illustration of these peculiarities ; but as 
the play progressed, and she became in truth Lady 
Macbeth, all this staginess disappeared, and she seemed 
to have forgotten herself; she was acting no longer. 

* This lady was married to Mr. Edwin Booth in July, i860, and 
died in February, 1863. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAiV. 



79 



She coaxed and chided by turns ; was now the queen, 
again the loving wife, and then the suffering, conscience- 
stricken woman, with all the naturalness possible. Of 
course there are differences of opinion upon Miss 
Cushman's playing, as upon everything else in the 
world, and I shall give both sides of the question here. 
Mr. Murdock says in " The Stage : " — 

" Miss Cushman's style of acting, while it lacked im- 
agination, possessed in a remarkable degree the ele- 
ments of force. She grasped the intellectual body of 
the poet's conception without mastering its more subtle 
spirit ; she caught the facts of a character, but its con- 
ceits were beyond her reach. Her understanding was 
never at fault ; it was keen and penetrating, but that 
glow of feeling which springs from the centre of emo- 
tional elements was not a prominent constituent of her 
organization. She was intensely prosaic, definitely prac- 
tical j and hence her perfect identity with what may be 
termed the materialism of Lady Macbeth, and the still 
more fierce personality of that dramatic nondescript, 
Meg Merrilies, neither of which characters was of 
' imagination all compact,' but rather of imperious 
wilfulness." 

Mr. Vandenhoff writes in his " Note Book : " — 
" I never admired her Lady Macbeth. It is too 
animal ; it wants intellectual confidence and relies too 
much on physical energy. Besides, she bullies Mac- 
beth, gets him into a corner of a stage, and — as I heard 
a man with more force than elegance express it — she 
' pitches into him.' In fact, as one sees her large, 
clenched hand and muscular arm threatening him, in 



So CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

alarming proximity, one feels that if other arguments 
. fail with her husband, she will have recourse to blows." 

We have seen how, in this very character, she inter- 
ested Macready the first night that she played with 
him ; also how, on the occasion of his farewell, when 
he acted before the Queen, he chose Miss Cushman to 
support him. All this is the highest praise he could 
have given her. 

John D. Stockton in Scribner's Monthly Magazine 
for June, 1876, says : — 

" As a tragic actress Charlotte Cushman held an un- 
surpassed position. Of her greatness in her own art 
there is no question. Shakespeare in our day has had 
no grander exponent than she. . . . She frequently rose 
to the level of the Shakespearian mind, was kindled with 
the Shakespearian fire, so that in her inspired moments 
she realized the character. It was not always thus, for 
the greatest of actors can only effect by supreme effort 
that which Shakespeare did with apparently unconscious 
ease. But it is enough glory for an actress when she 
can cause her auditors to forget, even if only for a mo- 
ment, the difference between the Lady Macbeth of the 
stage and the Lady Macbeth of the book ; that she, 
too, has something of the magic which deludes men to 
delight, and is able to re-create with no unworthy hand 
creations which are unrivalled in imagination. ... All 
the elements of Miss Cushman's artistic nature were 
large, and were cast in heroic mould. The grand char- 
acteristic of her genius seemed to be the rare union 
and perfect balance of her passion and intellect. The 
deep emotional powers are frequently lost upon the 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. g r 

stage, because of the want of adequate intellectual 
direction ; but the tremendous strength of Charlotte 
Cushman was controlled by the laws of intellectual 
beauty and truth. Even in the terrific outbursts of 
Meg Merrilies, the agonized madness of Bianca, or 
the remorse of Lady Macbeth, she never ranted nor 
overstepped the modesty of nature. Passion is like 
fire, a good servant but a dangerous master, and with 
her it was kept within the bounds of the purest art. 
This gave to her acting the charm of reserved power ; 
it did not convey the impression of labor and effort, 
but one of natural inspiration and ease." 

One more quotation from Mr. H. A. Clapp in the 
Boston Advertiser, May, 1875, when she last appeared 
as Lady Macbeth : — 

" Miss Cushman at once compels the closest attention 
and the strongest interest of the spectator; and long 
before the tragedy is concluded she has accomplished 
the wonderful feat of gaining for herself the warmest 
sympathy. In the scenes of the first and second acts, 
in which Lady Macbeth figures, no one with a mind any 
less excessively subtle than Mr. Weiss's could discover, 
we think, that love and not ambition is the main motive 
of the woman's character ; but further on, when the 
dread judgment of crime has overtaken the royal crim- 
inals, Miss Cushman represents the womanly nature of 
Lady Macbeth as succumbing in anguish before her 
own conscience, while her whole heart is turned in 
tender compassion to the suffering of her husband. 

" During the Banquet scene Lady Macbeth is shown 
as regal in dignity, and shrewd, self-possessed, and ready 



82 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

in explaining the King's emotion, trying to chide him 
into courage, and dismissing the company of dangerous 
witnesses ; but upon the departure of the guests she 
has only broken words expressive of the deepest affec- 
tion for her husband, and at the close of the interview, 
by groans and gestures and looks, she shows how all 
her inward courage has disappeared, — that she can 
yet encounter the world, but hides her face from God, 
and conscience, His avenger. 

" Miss Cushman now carried out this idea — which, 
of course, is not new — with absolute boldness and 
sharpness ; it is consistent with the rest of her concep- 
tion, is highly effective in itself, and correctly represents 
one justifiable view of Shakespeare's purpose. To such 
a nature the Sleep-walking scene comes with the effect 
of a dramatic climax, but inevitably. Lady Macbeth } s 
soul must confess the horror of its remorse ; she would 
die a hundred several deaths before making a sign to 
the world ; but in sleep her will is powerless, and her 
dread Judge sentences her to be forever re-enacting her 
crime. Miss Cushman's whole interpretation deserves 
the careful study, as it will compel the admiration, of 
all persons of judgment and culture." 

A fact of great interest in connection with this per- 
sonation has been told me by Mr. Lawrence Barrett. 
It is that Miss Cushman maintained that, all through the 
more important scenes of the play, both Macbeth and 
Lady Macbeth were under the influence of wine. She 
supported her opinion from the text, and believed that 
Shakespeare supposed it to be apparent that they were 
drunk. This suits well with the manner which Miss 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 83 

Cushman had at some points in the play, a reckless, 
swinging way of doing everything and an apparent care- 
lessness of what happened. When the play is read with 
this theory in mind, it is easy to find many things that 
suit it well. 

Miss Cushman passed a portion of the summer of 
1858 at Malvern, went to various points of interest in 
Great Britain, and in October turned her face towards 
Rome, visiting many other places en route. Arrived 
at Rome she occupied herself in fitting up her home in 
Via Gregoriana, known to so many of her countrymen 
and women. It was most advantageously placed, and 
there she lived what, to a person of her age and tastes, 
must have been as nearly an ideal life as is often enjoyed 
in this world. Her fame was world-wide ; her superi- 
ority in the profession she had chosen was fully acknowl- 
edged ; all doors were open to her \ indeed, people of 
rank, in literature and art as well as by birth, sought 
her acquaintance, and she was able to do many kind- 
nesses for others, a privilege she always craved and 
improved. 

This first winter in the Roman home was followed by 
a sad springtime, for in April news came to her of 
Mrs. Muspratt's illness. She hastened to Liverpool and 
arrived before the death of her sister, which occurred 
on the 10th of May, 1859. When we consider what 
the tie had been between these two sisters, and how 
Miss Cushman had been to her sister a support and 
friend, almost a second mother, we can easily under- 
stand the void she must have found in her life when 
that sister was taken out of it. 



84 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

After spending the summer in Wales she returned to 
Rome. The winter of 1859-60 was a quiet one. It 
was then that her friend, Miss Stebbins, made a portrait 
bust of her. The original belongs to the Handel and 
Haydn Society of Boston ; several copies exist in dif- 
ferent places in America, and one is at Seaforth Hall, 
Liverpool. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 85 



CHAPTER VIII. 
1860-1870. 

On the 9th of June, i860, Miss Cushman again sailed 
for America, and in the following autumn devoted her- 
self to her profession. She commenced an engagement 
of forty-eight nights at Winter Garden, New York, 
October 1. The first night she appeared as Mrs. 
Haller, with John Dyott as The Stranger. During the 
engagement she acted Bia?ica, with Ada Clifton as 
Aldabella and Dyott as Fazio ; Meg Merrilies, with Mrs. 
Chanfrau as Lucy, Couldock as Dandle, and Davidge 
as Dominie Sampson; Romeo to the Juliet of Mrs. 
D. P. Bowers ; and Cardinal Wolsey in " Henry VIII. ," 
with Mrs. Duffield as Queen Katherine. It was a very 
brilliant season, and in February and March, 1861, she 
fulfilled another engagement at the same theatre. She 
then acted Nancy Sikes for the first time in New York 
for many years, with the following strong cast : Mrs. 
George Stoddart as Oliver, J. W. Wallack, Jr., as 
Fagin, J. B. Studley as Bill Sikes, Davidge as Bwnble, 
and Owen Marlowe as Fang. Later she appeared as 
Katherine to Wallack's Fetruchio. 

On the 2 1 st of March she acted at the Academy of 
Music, New York, for the benefit of the American 



86 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Dramatic Fund. It is said that the cast of " Macbeth " 
on that evening was the strongest which had been 
known in that tragedy in a generation. It was as 
follows : — 

Macbeth Edwin Booth. 

Duncan . . . C. Kemble Mason. 

Malcolm . O. B. Collins. 

Banquo A. W. Fenno. 

Macduff 1 [ Charles Fisher. 

Lenox \ Noblemen of Scotland \ T. Weymiss. 
Rosse J [ T. Hamblin, Jr. 

Bleeding Officer Felix Rogers. 

First Murderer J. C. Williamson. 

Lad}- Macbeth Miss Cushman. 

Principal Singing Witch .... Mme. Anna Bishop. 

First Witch Harry Pearson. 

Second Witch John Sefton. 

Third Witch James Lingard. 

The whole occasion was a memorable one, and the 
receipts, thirty-one hundred dollars, were one third 
larger than those of previous benefits. 

A wedding in Miss Cushman's family took her to 
St. Louis at this time, and she was greatly interested in 
what she heard there, and in other Southwestern cities, 
concerning the war, just then beginning. She made 
her final appearance that season at New Haven, and 
sailed for England in July. 

After hearing of the first battle of Bull Run, she 
thus writes on August 8 : — 

" The news brought by the last steamer has made 
me so sad and so heart-sick that I hardly know how 
to talk or write about it, further than this, that I believe 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 87 

in God's goodness, and that even this must work to- 
gether for good. . . . But I am sorry not to be at 
home to see the matter through. God help the weak 
and prosper the right, and send the wrong-doer the 
punishment he deserves. I do think the South comes 
rightfully by this success, on the principle that the 
Devil helps his own at first. Let those laugh who win. 
It was natural that all this playing at soldiers should 
result in a shameful defeat ; but we shall see what will 
be the end." 

After a summer in her usual resorts, she left early in 
the autumn for Rome ; and there is nothing of unusual 
interest in her life until June, 1863, when she came 
again to America, principally for the purpose of acting 
for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. For this 
charity she appeared in Philadelphia, September 1 2 ; 
in Boston, September 16; in Baltimore, October 19; 
and in New York, October 22, — realizing for the fund 
a total sum of eight thousand two hundred and sixty- 
seven dollars. 

Dr. Henry W. Bellows, President of the United 
States Sanitary Commission, thus wrote, in a card 
which he published after Miss Cushman had sailed for 
Europe : — 

" This magnificent product of the genius of Miss 
Cushman, devoted to the relief of our suffering soldiers, 
is only the most striking exemplification yet made of 
woman's power and will to do her full part in the 
national struggle. ... It is due to Miss Charlotte 
Cushman to say that this extraordinary gift of money, 
so magically evoked by her spell, is but the least part 



88 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

of the service which, ever since the war began, she 
has been rendering our cause in Europe. Her earnest 
faith in the darkest hours, her prophetic confidence in 
our success, her eloquent patriotism in all presences, 
have been potent influences abroad, and deserve and 
command the gratitude of the whole nation." 

It was during the same visit that Miss Cushman 
read the Ode on the occasion of the dedication of the 
Great Organ in the Boston Music Hall. 

In the course of the following winter a splendid 
album, containing pictures in oil and water colors, 
painted by artists of the cities in which Miss Cushman 
had acted for the great cause of the day, was forwarded 
to her in Rome, as an expression of the appreciation 
of her efforts for the aid of our soldiers. 

She resumed her usual mode of life in Europe, 
going between Rome and England, and there are 
signs that her health was already affected by the insidi- 
ous disease which she had inherited ; but she kept up 
her interest in everything, especially in what was occur- 
ring here. On March 4, 1865, she wrote: "What a 
day this is at home ! How grand Mr. Lincoln must 
feel that, by the sheer force of honesty, integrity, and 
patience, he has overcome faction to such an extent 
that he is to-day, by the convictions of the whole people, 
placed again in the presidential chair to guide and 
protect their interests for four more years. The first 
election of a President may have come through popu- 
lar clamor, through the passions and excitements of 
the moment being successfully played upon by popular 
orators; but the calm reindorsement of faith in his 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 89 

judgment, reason, calmness, prudence, and goodness, 
after such a four years, is a spectacle sublime in the 
eyes of men and angels, at a juncture like the present, 
when the world looks on in curious wonder and doubt 
and distrust at the struggle upon which depend repub- 
lican institutions for all future time. God help him to 
keep true and faithful ! " 

During the next month, when the news came of Mr. 
Lincoln's death and the attack upon Mr. Seward, the 
anxiety and unhappiness of Americans in Rome was 
very great ; and when it is remembered that Mr. Sew- 
ard and Miss Cushman were warm friends, her personal 
sorrow will be appreciated. Her letters to Miss Sew- 
ard, and after her death to Mr. Seward, are very inter- 
esting. In one of these she speaks of her own health 
as having prevented her from coming to America the 
previous summer ; and yet, with deep personal sorrow 
in her heart, and physical suffering in addition, there 
were those about her who drew all their strength from 
her hope and courage. She was indeed, then, the 
cross-bearer ; and so great was the effect she produced 
upon the Americans in Rome that some of them have 
since declared that they even walked the streets in the 
hope of meeting her and hearing her strong, cheerful 
words. 

Meantime political excitements had arisen in Italy, 
prior to the Austrian war; and in May, 1866, when 
troops were being moved and all sorts of hindrances 
existed in the way of travelling, Miss Cushman was 
summoned to London by the illness of her mother. 
She made all possible haste, but news of Mrs. Cush- 



90 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



man's death met her in Paris. This grief affected her 
seriously in health and spirits. 

In the autumn she returned to Rome, and during 
that winter (1867) was very much interested in a Dan- 
ish sculptor, Wilhelm Mathieu, who was old and poor. 
Several years before he had made for a Russian Grand 
Duchess three busts of musical composers, — Pales- 
trina, Mozart, and Beethoven ; and Miss Cushman pro- 
posed that if the plaster casts of these works, which she 
presented to the Boston Music Hall, should be admired 
sufficiently, a fund should be raised to put them into 
marble, for which purpose she would give a benefit 
performance. In the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1868, 
there appeared a long article relative to these busts, 
written by Mr. John Sullivan D wight. Miss Cushman 's 
plan did not meet with the desired response, and noth- 
ing more was ever done about the matter. 

In the autumn of 1867 Miss Cushman was on the 
coast of Cornwall, and in one of her letters spoke of 
the likeness of Bude to Newport, and said, " I am so 
much better and stronger for this wild, unceremonious 
life among the rocks and deep-sea caves." But her 
condition gradually became more and more alarming, 
until in the spring of 1869 sne consulted Dr. J. Marion 
Sims, in Paris. Her disease was cancer of the breast, 
and Dr. Sims earnestly advised her " to do nothing, to 
live well, take care of her general health, amuse her- 
self, and forget her trouble if possible." Miss Steb- 
bins, in her biography of Miss Cushman, expresses 
regret that this course was not followed ; but Miss Cush- 
man was restless under the feeling that possibly some 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



91 



quick relief existed, and finally, after consulting Sir 
James Paget, she went to Edinburgh, where Sir James 
Simpson performed an operation for her relief. An 
account of the remarkable manner in which she met 
this trial appeared in the New York Evening Post after 
her death. A portion of this article is here given. The 
writer, who signs with the initials J. C, after telling 
of the first meeting with Miss Cushman at Malvern, 
says : — 

" Miss Cushman was in excellent spirits and appar- 
ently in full health, not one of us supposing for a mo- 
ment the cause of her leaving Italy. ... As we left 
the house at a late hour she said : ' So you are going 
to Edinburgh ! Well, I shall see you there shortly ; 
and will you kindly look up some lodgings for Miss 
Stebbins and myself? ' Soon after our arrival the ladies 
followed. . . . Almost every evening for a week we 
visited them, — always agreeably entertained by the 
lively manners of Miss Cushman, although we could 
but notice an increasing shade of melancholy on the 
face of her faithful companion. 

" At last she said one day as we parted : ' Don't 
come here to-morrow ; I do not think I shall be very 
well for a day or two.' On the next day, after dinner 
at Sir James Simpson's, a remark having been casually 
made by some one that Miss Cushman was complain- 
ing of a slight illness, Sir James cried : ' Slight illness ! 
Do you know that I operated on her for cancer this 
morning? ' ... It was a terrible operation, occupying 
fifty-six minutes in its performance, and borne by the 
sufferer with the most heroic fortitude. 



92 



CHARLOTTE CUSHAT AN. 



"After a fortnight had passed, and the dangerous 
symptoms which supervened had disappeared, Miss 
Cushman sent a message that she was ready to see us 
again. I shall never forget the impression she then 
made upon us as she sat pillowed up in her easy-chair, 
— the placid repose of her pale face, in which every 
masculine trait had softened down and melted into the 
tenderness of her sex. 

" ' I have not been very well, lately,' she said, ' but 
I am glad to see you again ; ' nor did she then or after- 
ward allude to her complaint. Day by day we watched 
her steady improvement until she was herself again, 
declaiming as she talked, and electrifying us with her 
eloquence of word and thought. . . . Had the opera- 
tion been completely successful she would doubtless 
have continued in private life. 

" But to her knowledge that she labored under an 
incurable malady the public is indebted for her latest 
and most wonderful displays of histrionic talent, to 
which she devoted her powers for the sole purpose of 
driving her thought away from herself. The world has 
not known what prompted Charlotte Cushman, in her 
later years, to reappear upon the stage, — how small 
was her ambition for applause, and how little she re- 
garded pecuniary gain." 

The operation took place on the 26th of August, 
1869, and very serious complications followed; her 
life seemed to hang in the balance," but a good consti- 
tution and an iron will prevailed, and she rallied. For 
a short time it was hoped that the disease was baffled. 
In November she went again to Rome. She never 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN T . 



93 



fully regained her strength, however, after the great 
nervous shock of the operation, and in the course of 
the winter she knew but too well that all she had en- 
dured had availed nothing. 

In the spring of 1870 she again sought the advice of 
Sir James Paget, who had before approved of Sir James 
Simpson's course. This year Miss Cushman urged 
him to consent to the treatment of excision by caustic. 
At last he consented, and during the month of June 
she submitted to this exquisitely painful process with 
her accustomed courage. Again hopes of a cure were 
indulged for a brief space ; she went to Malvern to 
" build up ; " but very soon the unfavorable symptoms 
reappeared, and she resolved to revisit America. 



94 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHAPTER IX. 

1870-1874. 

In October, 1870, Miss Cushman sailed from Eng- 
land for the last time, and soon after her arrival in 
America she appeared as a reader of Shakespeare. It 
seems almost like a slight to Miss Cushman to say that 
her success was great, — at first thought that would 
appear to " go without saying ; " but when we consider 
what a different matter it is to render all the parts of a 
play instead of one, the reading of Shakespeare assumes 
immense proportions. In this department Miss Cush- 
man has been equalled only by Fanny Kemble, and 
excelled by none. Her great personal magnetism at- 
tracted her audiences and held them in sympathy with 
her ; her directness, her subtle humor, her force of 
manner, and, above all, her imaginative weirdness, all 
combined to produce an effect as yet unrivalled by any 
one of the great army of " readers " who have followed 
her. Her most important readings were the plays of 
Shakespeare, but she by no means limited herself to 
these. She went " from grave to gay, from lively to 
severe," and her mingling of tenderness, delicacy, pa- 
thos, and humor, with her intensity in passionate parts, 
could nowhere find such scope as in the works of Shake- 
speare. But the usual sequence of the comedy is as 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



95 



much relished after the tragedy in reading as in acting, 
and her renderings of " Betsey and I are Out," and 
" Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question," were always 
heartily relished, as they deserved to be. Her read- 
ing of dialect poems was simply exquisite, while purely 
lyrical selections, like the " Lady of Shalott," were 
no less justly given. When she read heroic pieces, 
such as "The Charge of the Light Brigade," " Herve 
Riel," and "The Battle of Ivry," she poured out all the 
enthusiasm and spiritual force of her own nature, and 
inevitably wrought to the very highest pitch the same 
qualities in her audience. 

During the winter of 1870 Miss Cushman went to 
Newport to try the air there, as it had been recom- 
mended to her for a winter residence. She soon 
determined to build "Villa Cushman," and with her 
accustomed celerity executed her plan. 

It was in this year that she wrote thus sadly : — 

" I am waiting ; seeking all simple aids that can pal- 
liate my trouble ; avoiding all things that can fatigue 
me ; leading for the most part and for the first time in 
my life an idle existence, but I hope, with God's help, 
not a useless one for all that; for in trying to train 
myself to patience perhaps I am helping those who 
love me and suffer with me." 

Her physicians advised her to work, for they saw 
that change, occupation, and constant diversion were 
necessary to her; and after such a life as hers had 
been the resources of a Newport winter would have 
been very tame to her, — not sufficient to banish her 
doubts and fears for a single hour ; but while in pub- 



96 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

lie, either in acting or reading, she was not ill or suffer- 
ing, — not Charlotte Cushman, but for the time she was 
— any one whom she had elected to be. 

On Sept. 25, 187 1, she was at Booth's Theatre, ap- 
pearing as Queen Katherine, Lady Macbeth, and Meg 
MerriZies. Her engagement lasted until November 4, 
and the enthusiasm and sympathy which the public 
then manifested for her bore full witness to the esteem 
in which her acting was held, and to the power she 
still exerted over her audiences. I shall here give 
some quoted opinions of Miss Cushman as Queen 
Katherine, which character is very generally consid- 
ered her masterpiece. The first is from Mr. William 
Winter, in the New York Tribime : — 

" In dealing with the conceptions of Shakespeare, 
Miss Cushman's spirit was the same, but her method 
was different. As Meg Merrilies, she obeyed the law of 
her own nature ; as Queen Katherine, she obeyed the 
law of the poetic ideal that encompassed her. In that 
stately, sweet, and pathetic character, and again, though 
to a less extent, in the terrible yet tender character of 
Lady Macbeth, both of which she apprehended through 
an intellect always clear and an imagination always ade- 
quate, the form and limitations prescribed by the domi- 
nant genius of the poet were scrupulously respected. 
She made Shakespeare real, but she never dragged him 
down to the level of the actual. She knew the heights 
of that wondrous intuition and potent magnetism, and 
she lifted herself and her hearers to their grand and 
beautiful eminence. Her best achievements in the 
illustration of Shakespeare were accordingly of the high- 



CHARL O TTE CUSHMAN. 



97 



est order of art. They were at once human and poetic. 
They were white marble suffused with fire. They thrilled 
the heart with emotion and passion, and they filled the 
imagination with a thoroughly satisfying sense of beauty, 
power, and completeness. They have made her illus- 
trious. They have done much to assert the possible 
grandeur and beneficence of the stage, and to confirm 
it in the affectionate esteem of thoughtful men and wo- 
men. They remain now as a rich legacy in the remem- 
brance of this generation, and they will pass into history 
among the purest, highest, and most cherished works 
that genius has inspired and art has accomplished to 
adorn an age of culture and to elevate the human 
mind." 

The following is from the pen of Mr. H. A. Clapp, and 
appeared in the Boston Advertiser, May 4, 1875, dur- 
ing her final engagement : — 

" Simple with the simplicity of true art, powerfully 
and imaginatively conceived, and expressed with a rare 
commingling of queenly dignity and womanly pathos, 
this noble effort commends itself to every refined taste, 
to every cultivated mind, and to every sensitive heart. 
After the weak, unintellectual acting which has lately 
been inflicted upon us in serious and Shakespearian 
parts, ... it is indeed a feast to witness Miss Cush- 
man's finished and discriminating acting, and, above 
all, to listen to her pure and expressive delivery of the 
text, in which every one of the master dramatist's golden 
words is made to yield its treasure of thought, and yet 
in due relation and proportion to every other factor of 
the meaning. 



pg CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" In Miss Cushman's present assumption we see little 
variation from her former performance, except that she 
now emphasizes the queenly and majestic side of the 
character a little more than before, and thus makes its 
pathetic aspect somewhat less conspicuous. A good 
illustration of this appears in Miss Cushman's delivery 
of her last lines in the Trial scene ; the w r ords, — 

' I will not tarry ; no, nor evermore, 
Upon this business, my appearance make 
In any of their courts,' — 

which Miss Cushman used to give with a burst of an- 
guish, as if the overfraught heart could bear its weight 
no longer, she now declaims with fiery, passionate in- 
tensity. Miss Cushman also dwells more than used to 
be her wont upon the physical horrors of her Sick 
scene, with a gain to its sensational effect, but with a 
slight loss, as we think, to the beauty and serenity which 
should be its most marked qualities. But the whole 
of this last scene is, as ever, most touching in its natu- 
ralness, and most noble in its moral grandeur and 
sweetness." 

Miss Elizabeth Peabody thus wrote of the first time 
that she saw Miss Cushman in this character : — 

" I need not say how I enjoyed her splendid imper- 
sonation throughout, but specially the Death scene. It 
was perfectly wonderful how she blended the infirmi- 
ties of dying with the majesty of her spirit. But espe- 
cially I was struck anew with the miraculous genius of 
Shakespeare, as evinced in that last speech to C?-om- 
well, in which Queen Katherlne characterized Wolsey 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



99 



in those sharp, heavily thought-freighted sentences, 
which it was obvious must be just so concise and terse 
because the fast-coming death so overcame her power 
to utter, that it was only by the intense will that she 
could utter at all, and so was forced to concentrate 
much in the few words of each sentence. Then, in the 
very death, she did not seem to struggle much, — did 
not evince physical pain, only torpor of organs. She 
went out of the body almost visibly, while the song of 
angels was sung behind the scenes." 

The engagement at Booth's, spoken of above, was 
very successful ; the receipts for forty-two nights were 
fifty-seven thousand dollars. I shall give one other 
extract, from a journal of the day, which refers to her 
in the part of Queen Katherim : — 

" She acted with remarkable strength and fire. That 
she would bring back to the stage her old earnestness 
and subtlety, her unique command of all the resources 
of art, and her keen appreciation of the text, — enrich- 
ing even the spaces between the lines with wonderful 
suggestiveness of look and gesture, — we quite ex- 
pected ; but last night she did more ; she threw into 
her performance a vigor and intensity not inferior, as 
we remember them, to those characteristics in her best 
days. ... If weakness exists it is more than atoned 
for by the splendor of her intelligence, her scholarly 
and refined elocution, the pathos, the simplicity, the 
effectiveness of her action. It is one thing to play a 
queen's part ; it is another thing to look like a queen. 
. . . There was royalty in her demeanor, a conscious- 
ness of power in every movement, which made her the 
one figure of interest on the stage." 



I0 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

The following anecdote shows what a place her pas- 
sion for the stage held in her very soul, and makes us 
wonder, with her, how she could live away from it. It 
was on the opening night of this first engagement at 
Booth's, when she played Queen Katherine and was 
greeted with the wildest enthusiasm by an immense 
audience. At the close of the first act she was called 
before the curtain and received tremendous applause ; 
after this some one saw her in the wings quivering from 
head to foot with excitement, her eyes wells of flame. 
Just then the storm of applause burst out afresh for a 
second " call ; " as Miss Cushman heard it she threw 
up her arms with a peculiar gesture, and cried out in a 
tone of indescribable, passionate, eager ecstasy : " Oh ! 
how have I ever lived without this through all these 
years ! " 

She next filled an engagement in Boston, and while 
there wrote the following letter to a friend in Eng- 
land : — 

" Your letter should have been acknowledged long 
ere this, but I have been the busiest and hardest- 
worked human being you ever knew for these last thir- 
teen weeks. I do not remember even in my youngest 
days ever to have accomplished so much, for then I 
had only my profession, and no society duty to attend 
to as well. I have been hard at work bodily, men- 
tally, socially, and not, I hope, worthlessly. If you 
have seen any of the New York papers from about the 
26th September and 17th October to 29th of the 
same, you would have seen that my country-people 
give me credit for growth in grace, and believe now 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



IOI 



firmly that they have a Siddons of their own ! Of 
course it is not displeasing to me to be so considered, 
but I know better ! I dare say I have grown intellect- 
ually, and my suffering has been sent to me in vain if I 
have not improved in spirit during all the time I have 
been away from my profession ; but as a mere actress 
I was as good, if not better, eleven years ago than I 
am now. But what is printed lives for us, and what is 
conceived and acted lives only in the memory of the 
beholder ; thus I am glad that such things should be 
printed of me. I do not think it has hurt me physi- 
cally to work. While the recognition has done my 
soul and spirit good, I feel that I have not labored in 
vain. 

" Then, after New York, when I went to my native 
city, Boston, where they never believed in me as much 
as they did elsewhere, I came to have such praise as 
made my heart satisfied, and they indorsed their good 
opinions in a substantial way, which was also good. 
The City Council paid me a great honor in formally 
announcing to the world that one of their chief boasts, 
their public school system, should be associated with 
my name, by enacting that henceforth and forever the 
school building, which had been erected on the site 
where stood the house in which I was born, was to be 
known as the Cushman School. This from old Puri- 
tan stock, which believes that the public school is the 
throne of the State, was a greater honor than any I 
could have received from them. I was proud, first, 
that I as an actress had won it ; then, secondly, that for 
the first time this had been bestowed on a woman : 



! 2 CHA RL TTE CUSHMAN. 

and then came the civic pride, in knowing that my 
towns-people should care that I ever was born. Noth- 
ing in all my life has so pleased me as this." 

The scene when Miss Cushman visited the school 
was thus described : — 

" Miss Cushman made a tour of the building, gracing 
each room with her presence. Then all were assem- 
bled in the hall for a dedicatory service. On the floor 
were seated the pupils, — a thousand girls ; on the 
platform, teachers and visitors ; and, in the centre, Miss 
Cushman. Here she made her i maiden speech,' as 
she smilingly said. Those upturned girlish faces were 
all the inspiration she needed, and a flush of enthusi- 
asm gathered on her pale face. For their encourage- 
ment she told them she walked those very streets a 
school-girl as poor as the poorest among them. With 
rapid gestures of her large, shapely hands, her eyes 
glowing with the fire of her own peculiar genius and 
her habitual intensity, she told them that whatever she 
had attained had been by giving herself to her work. 
A patience that tired not, an energy that faltered not, 
a persistence that knew no flagging, principles that 
swerved not, — and the victory was hers after long 
years of hard work. Higher than her intellectual 
strength, higher than her genius, her culture, or graces 
of character, she ranked her ability for work. This was 
the secret of her success, and the legacy she be- 
queathed the girls of the Cushman School. They knew 
something of her history, — that she had educated her- 
self; that she had stoutly resisted the shafts of disease ; 
that the great men of the age delighted to do her 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 10 $ 

honor ; that she was an earnest, religious woman, upon 
whose fair name rested no cloud of suspicion. They 
felt the soft womanliness of her character shining out 
from the majesty of her strength, and who can say how 
many impulses ' To dare and do and be ' were born 
there?" 

Early in January, 1872, Miss Cushman started on an 
extended tour. She read and acted in many places, and 
did not reach her new home in Newport until June ; 
and even after that she read at Narragansett and New- 
port for the benefit of local charities. She allowed 
herself but little rest, and in October began another 
season's work. She was acting in Boston in November, 
when the great fire interrupted her engagement. In 
December she went to the West, and early in the new 
year (1873) joined Mr. Lawrence Barrett's company 
in New Orleans. She was under an engagement to act 
with Mr. Barrett, but after a week she became very ill. 
She struggled, with almost superhuman determination, 
to adhere to her plans ; each morning she declared 
herself better, and anticipated acting at night, but be- 
fore the day was over she was forced to yield to her 
weakness, and was constantly disappointed. At last, 
wretched and suffering as she was, she made a fatiguing 
and comfortless journey to Philadelphia, and after a 
rest and medical care resumed her work in Washington 
in March. 

I am not sure that the following anecdote belongs to 
this visit to New Orleans ; but it is a well authenti- 
cated one, and I believe that the incident occurred at 
this time. Judge R , who was famed for his good 



104 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



dinners and his conversational powers, made a dinner- 
party for Miss Cushman. When they were seated at 
table, the Judge at the end and Miss Cushman on his 

right, she was attracted by the appearance of Mr. H , 

who sat opposite her. Before long he spoke, and she 
was much interested in him ; but the loquacious Judge 
gave little opportunity for any other person to talk, 
and as often as Miss Cushman asked a question to 

draw Mr. H out, so often the Judge interrupted 

and gave his opinion. At last Miss Cushman said, 

"Judge R , may I be allowed to tell you that I 

wish to hear Mr. H talk a little ? " or words to 

that effect. 

Naturally the Judge subsided, but it was for the first 
time in his life ; and as this occurred but a short time 
before his death it was sometimes jokingly said to have 
been fatal to him. 

Mr. H accompanied Miss Cushman to her ho- 
tel ; and in the course of the drive, which was three or 

four miles, she endeavored to persuade Mr. H that 

Forrest was not a good actor, and gave what seemed 
to her valid reasons for this opinion. When they 
reached the St. Charles, as she descended from the 
carnage, she said, " I hope I have convinced you, Mr. 

H ." With his courtly manner he lifted his hat, 

bowed, and said, " Charmed, Miss Cushman, but not 
converted ! " 

Everything in her life now seemed tinged with sad- 
ness. A deep, dark shadow hung over all, and some of 
her letters, written from 1872 to 1874, sound as if for 
herself the drama was ended and the curtain about to 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



105 



fall. But for the sake of others she tried to be hope- 
ful, to be the same strong friend on whom they had 
leaned so long. I give a few extracts from these let- 
ters, without dates or order, to tell in her own words 
how sad and suffering she was. 

" I do get so dreadfully depressed about myself, and 
all things seem so hopeless to me at those times, that I 
pray God to take me quickly at any moment, so that 
I am not allowed to torture those I love by letting 
them see my pain. But when the dark hour passes, 
and I try to forget by constant occupation that I have 
had such a load near my heart, then it is not so bad." 

To a friend in sorrow she wrote : — 

" God bless you, and help you in all ways to bear, 
to endure, and be patient. This is the best prayer I 
can make for you, and it covers all the ground of a 
life. From my soul I make it a hundred times a day ; 
but prayers are all I can give you to help you. I am 
not able to come to give you comfort and strength by 
my presence." 

" I do not get over my dreadful depression and sick- 
ness of heart,, and I cannot reason myself out of it. I 
suppose it is that I am weaker than ever before, and 
the summer has been a greater strain upon me than I 
knew until the reaction came. I have had much trial 
this summer, more than any one knows. First, the 
excitement of getting into the house; then the heat, 
the arrival of the things from Rome, and the sickness 
of soul over the memories that were awakened at the 
sight of them ; but, most of all, the wrench I had at 
last in the departure of my children, the breaking up 



!06 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

and being left alone. I have been very lonely. This 
is a confession of weakness; but enough of myself." 

She now constantly closed her letters with these 
words : " Ah, I pray God in his infinite mercy to take 
me quickly, that I may not wear out those who love 
me!" 

Still she worked and worked on. From Toledo, in 
November, 1873, sne wrote : — 

" I have got off acting at a matinee, which was first 
intended ; and I shall give thanks for that, and all the 
infinite mercies of God to me, for they are manifold. 
I am suffering a good deal more pain than I like to 
acknowledge, and only when I am on the stage or 
asleep am I unconscious of it. This has been unceas- 
ing since the summer, and I suppose I must expect it ; 
but while I can bear it I am wrong to give any expres- 
sion of it, even to you. It is wicked of me to say 
anything about it, and I have a great mind to destroy 
this letter ; and yet, — and yet, when we regularly face 
our real troubles I believe they become more endur- 
able, and the thought conveyed in one of your last 
letters, that anything happening to me would kill you, 
gives me much sad thought. I have been spared 
much longer than you or I ever thought possible when 
my trouble first declared itself. We ought to be better 
prepared by this time, and we must accept the inevi- 
table ; though I am a poor creature to talk in this way, 
for I cannot accept even the inevitable without fight- 
ing. I have fought, God knows, very hard for four 
years, especially the two last ; but I know my enemy ; 
he is ever before me, and he must conquer ; but I can- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. IO y 

not give up to him. I laugh in his face, and try to be 
jolly, — and I am ! I declare I am, even when he 
presses me hardest." 

When in Chicago, during this winter, a very pleasant 
thing happened to her, in this wise. It was the last 
night of her engagement at M'Vicker's Theatre, and 
the company with whom she had acted had found 
her so kindly and friendly to all, from the most impor- 
tant member down to the people employed about the 
stage, that they had determined to give her a little 
testimonial of their regard. The gift was a heavy gold 
ring upon which was inscribed " Kind Words ! " 

Mr. M'Vicker presented it in behalf of the company. 
" During all the preliminary proceedings Miss Cushman 
had stood like one utterly at a loss to know what it was 
all about. The perspiration stood in beads on her fore- 
head, and she who had faced hundreds of thousands 
glanced about as nervously and uneasily as the veriest 
novice. When, however, Mr. M'Vicker placed the ring 
in her hand with the accompanying letter, her expres- 
sive face relaxed into a broad smile of unmistakable 
surprise and pleasure, and, as a tear glistened for a 
moment in her eye and then stole down her cheek, in 
a few broken words she expressed her deep gratitude 
and delight at receiving such a token, in such a way, 
and from such a source." 

In February, 1874, she was quite ill in Baltimore, 
but soon rallied, and then for a time seemed more 
hopeful, and later in the spring went through a labori- 
ous series of readings in New York. The following 
notice is from the Tribwie of May 8, 1874. After say- 



108 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

ing that Miss Cushman was received with great applause, 
and that all the seats in the Academy of Music were 
filled, it continues : — 

" Miss Cushman's programme on Wednesday was less 
dramatic than either of its predecessors. ... It is no 
slight matter to succeed, through the medium of a read- 
ing, in presenting eight or ten different persons, each 
distinctly individualized and made a living reality to the 
eyes of the imagination. Miss Cushman always effects 
this result, and she wrought it in her treatment of the 
' Merchant of Venice.' It did not seem to us, how- 
ever, that, in this instance, her portraitures, when they 
were finished and set before the mind, amounted to 
anything more than conventional creatures of the stage. 
Her Shylock, certainly, was invested with no color of 
that religious exaltation and Oriental majesty which 
makes him great in the pages of Shakespeare. His 
vindictive cruelty was made conspicuous, and was per- 
mitted to swallow up all other attributes. . . . The fact, 
probably, is that Miss Cushman feels no real sympathy 
with the play of ' The Merchant of Venice,' and finds 
nothing in it to arouse the imagination, the pathos, the 
weird and romantic glow of emotion that are the pecu- 
liar and thrilling qualities or powers of her nature. You 
cannot see her Katherine or Wolsey without experienc- 
ing a kind of rapture of anguish and awe ; but you can 
see her Shylock with a calmness that is only disturbed 
by cold admiration for experienced mimetic skill. Her 
readings of A?itonio's letter and Portia's speech on 
Mercy were the gems of elocutionary art ; and there was 
the true spirit of comedy, the shimmer of a sparkling, 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 10 g 

evanescent life, in her treatment of Portia's first col- 
loquy with Nerissa. That same comedy spirit is in 
decadence upon our stage, and the sense of it, in Miss 
Cushman's acting, is like an echo of remembered music. 
It was in one — and but one — of the miscellaneous 
selections, following the scenes from Shakespeare, that 
those who recognized the magnetic power of Miss 
Cushman really felt its thrill, and saw, with sudden 
tremor, the flash of the eagle's wing. That was in her 
reading of ' The Whitby Fishing- Smack,' — a ballad of 
shipwreck and of the wild life of the sea-shore, in 
which are touched the elemental experiences and sor- 
rows of common humanity. On Miss Cushman's hu- 
morous sketches there is no need to comment. In 
her, as in so many others who are essentially tragic 
artists, the brilliant flowers of comic humor blossom 
out of the deep heart of pathos. Her Scotch, Irish, 
and English Provincial dialect-reading has long been 
noted for its admirable accuracy, and for the easy grace 
and homely truth of the character-studies that underlie 
it and crop out through its verbal foliage." 

George T. Ferris thus wrote of her readings : — 
" Miss Cushman is now mainly confining herself to 
the reading-desk. There can be no question that her 
peculiar intellectualism in art is shown even more in 
her readings than in her acting, notably so in her 
Shakespearian readings. In the dramas of Shakespeare, 
the characters have so essential a play of relation, and 
are so subtle in their bearings on one another, that, 
unless they are all justly apprehended, the totality of 
the drama is maimed and marred. No genius on the 



IIO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

part of Charlotte Cushman could prevent this on 
the stage. In the reading-desk she reigns as the sole 
magician, with the perfect opportunity to express the 
finest attainments of her thinking and culture. She has 
but to wave her wand to unlock from the prison-house 
of Shakespeare's pages all the immortal phantoms that 
brood within them. It is for her alone to invest them 
with a splendid and subtile life. 

" Miss Cushman's devotion to art remains unchanged. 
For many years she has been among those 

' Who live to be the show and gaze of the time.' 

That she may remain so for many years to come, and 
continue to illustrate her great conceptions, as none but 
she can, is the hope of thousands of admirers on both 
sides of the Atlantic." 

While in New York for these readings (1874) Miss 
Cushman was undergoing a course of treatment which 
she believed for the time to be beneficial, and from 
which she took courage, as is shown in the following 
note : — 

" I am satisfied that the treatment is doing me good ; 
not, perhaps, by any evidence in my special malady, 
but in my general condition. I am feeling generally 
much better. I am certainly going through my work 
wonderfully ; my spirits are better, and I can do more. 
I am sure it is the treatment. I am so settled in my 
faith in this, that I think I will consent to the engage- 
ment offered me at Booth's Theatre for October." 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. XII 



CHAPTER X. 

1874-1875. 

She continued the above medical treatment through 
the summer, and accepted the engagement at Booth's ; 
but before the time for her appearance arrived, she 
knew too well that she should act but little more. Her 
courage in doing so at all seemed miraculous to those 
who were near her when off the stage, as well as to the 
actors who supported her. But she found relief in 
playing ; in fact, the short time in which she was lost 
to herself in her public impersonations, when she was 
sleep-walking as Lady Macbeth, or dying as Queen 
Katherine, was the only time out of the whole twenty- 
four hours when she could forget her own mortal 
agony. 

Miss Cushman had also made conditional engage- 
ments with other managers in different parts of the 
country, and when she entered upon her autumn's 
labors she had not determined upon taking a formal 
farewell of the stage. Thus, when the great ovation in 
New York was tendered her, she explained that she had 
other engagements to act, and that she had besides the 
intention of still appearing in public as a reader. 

During her engagement at Booth's she personated 
her three great characters, and finally, on November 7, 



H2 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

she appeared as Lady Macbeth, with the following 
cast : — 

Lady Macbeth Miss Cushman. 

Macbeth Mr. George Vandenhoff. 

Macduff . . . Mr. Frederic B. Warde. 

Duncan Mr. Edwin Sheppard. 

Banquo Mr. Charles Wheatleigh. 

Malcolm Mr. Charles Rockwell. 

Hecate Miss Annie Kemp Bowler. 

Gentlewoman . Miss Emma Grattan. 

First Witch Mr. Charles Le Clerq. 

Second Witch Miss Mary Wells. 

Third Witch Mr. J. W. Brutone. 

It is interesting to recall the fact that Mrs. Siddons 
and Mr. Macready had also chosen " Macbeth " as 
their final play. I shall give the account of this even- 
ing, and of the remarkable testimonial to Miss Cush- 
man, which appeared in the New York Tribune ; for, 
though long, all the incidents are of interest now that 
that evening has taken its place as an important event 
in the history of the American drama : — 

" Remembrance will long keep in mind the incidents 
of Saturday night at Booth's Theatre, when Charlotte 
Cushman took her final leave of the metropolitan stage. 
The scene was one of quite extraordinary beauty. The 
spacious theatre — swept and cleansed and garnished 
— was crowded in every part, by an assemblage com- 
prising the most that is worthy and distinguished in 
our civic circle of literature, art, learning, and society. 
Faces of known and honored persons were seen in 
every direction. The intellect and the beauty of the 
metropolis were represented as they very seldom are 



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CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



"3 



in the theatres of to-day. The house was brilliantly 
illuminated, and it was decorated with a taste at once 
profuse and delicate. A tricolor, spangled with golden 
stars, was twined about the proscenium columns, and 
hung in festoons along the fronts of the galleries. The 
chandeliers were garlanded with autumn leaves, and 
with leaves and fruit of the vine, — symbolical of the 
maturity of that genius and the ripeness of that fame in 
which Miss Cushman retires from the theatre. Banners 
displaying the arms of the States were ranged along the 
upper tier. The flag of the Republic formed an arch 
over the central entrance, and flung its cheerful and 
hopeful folds over the proscenium boxes. In one of 
these boxes, inscribed in golden letters with the name 
of the Arcadian Club, — which society prompted this 
demonstration, and has carried it forward to signal and 
honorable success, — sat the poet Bryant, the poet 
Stoddard, Peter Cooper, and other distinguished guests 
of the club. In the opposite proscenium box, inscribed 
with the name of the Army and Navy Club, sat Major- 
General Hancock, Mr. Tilden, and other dignitaries of 
peace and of war. Perfumes, from great silver braziers 
upon the stage, made the air fragrant, and the dreamy 
music of the dear old Scotch melodies turned it into 
poetry and attuned every heart to sympathy with the 
spirit of the time. All that could be desired of intellect 
and brilliancy in an audience, and all that could be 
devised of tasteful accessories for a great occasion, were 
gathered and provided here ; and the occasion proved 
in every way worthy of the motive that prompted it, 
the idea that it celebrated, and the anticipation it had 
aroused. 



II4 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" Upon the performance there is now no reason to 
pause. It was marked by great and careful zeal in 
every respect, and it proved deeply impressive and sat- 
isfactory, and awoke at times the most emphatic appro- 
bation. Mr. VandenhorT and Miss Cushman were four 
times called before the curtain, and Mr. Warde was re- 
called both at the end of Macduff's scene in act fourth 
and at the end of the play. Mr. VandenhorT acted 
with all his usual correctness, and more than his usual 
fire, especially in the Banquet scene. Miss Cushman 
presented all those great tragic points of superlative ex- 
cellence, and that profound and agonizing identification 
with the character, which have made her Lady Macbeth 
famous. The only new business was (and this may not 
be new to others) the method of terminating the third 
act, by making separate exits for the king and queen, 
and thus allowing Lady Macbeth a larger opportunity to 
express the ravages of her remorse. This was greatly 
done by Miss Cushman ; but it sacrifices the pathetic 
idea of affectionate sympathy between these remorseful 
and horror-haunted murderers, in the desperation of 
their plight and in the awful eminence of their guilt 
and misery, and therefore is of questionable character. 
Miss Cushman's art in Lady Macbeth is perfect ; and it 
would be easily possible to fill a column with enumera- 
tion of its subtle beauties, such as the shrinking from 
Duncarts hand, when he offers it to lead her into the 
castle, and such as the wonderful by-play in which she 
so continually denotes her sense of her husband's com- 
plex, kindly, irresolute character. But there is now no 
call for this. The personation has passed into history 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 



115 



as one of the greatest dramatic achievements of our age, 
and the word for the hour is not so much a recognition 
of its established excellence as of record of an ovation, 
not more brilliant than deserved, to illustrious genius 
and imperishable renown. 

" It was about eleven o'clock when the curtain fell 
upon the tragedy. An interval ensued, which was filled 
with the hum of voices, the bustle of the moving multi- 
tude, and the music of Mr. Connelly's band. Then the 
curtain was again lifted, and one of the most distinguished 
companies that have ever been seen in a public place 
came into view. The stage was crowded. Prominent 
in the throng were Mr. Wallack, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. 
Boucicault, Mr. Gilbert, Miss Charlotte Thompson, and 
other professional friends of Miss Cushman. The ven- 
erable face of William Cullen Bryant, austere yet tender, 
shone out of the central throng. Mr. Charles Roberts, 
who had been selected by the Arcadian Club to read 
Mr. Stoddard's Ode, appeared at the right of the stand, 
which was wrought of the beautiful floral testimonials 
offered to Miss Cushman. The actress herself, hailed 
by plaudits that almost shook the building, entered and 
took her place upon the left of the stage ; and the cere- 
monies of farewell began. Mr. Stoddard's poem carries 
along with it its own testimonial. It is conceived and 
written in a simple spirit and style ; it is worthy of the 
genuine theme and the lofty occasion ; and it was uttered 
with sympathy and force, and received with every mark 
of public pleasure, — the applause at the end of the 
stanza which couples Cushman with Shakespeare being 
in a marked degree spontaneous and emphatic, and 



H5 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

the demonstration at the close being as full of heart as 
of sound, which is saying much for its fervor. Mr. 
Stoddard, writing in a difficult verse, because so simple 
in form and so devoid of ornament, and on a subject so 
difficult to treat with freshness of feeling and novelty of 
thought, has herein done great credit to his own deli- 
cate genius as well as suitable honor to the greatest 
actress of our time. The Ode is here given : — 



SALVE, REGINA. 

BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

The race of greatness never dies; 

Here, there, its fiery children rise, 
Perform their splendid parts, 
And captive take our hearts. 

Men, women, of heroic mould, 
Have overcome us from of old ; 

Crowns waited then, as now, 

For every royal brow. 

The victor in the Olympian Games — 
His name among the proudest names 
Was handed deathless down : 
To him the olive crown. 

And they, the poets, grave and sage, 
Stern masters of the tragic stage, 
Who moved by art austere 
To pity, love, and fear, — 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

To these was given the laurel crown, 
Whose lightest leaf conferred renown 

That through the ages fled 

Still circles each gray head. 

But greener laurels cluster now, 
World-gathered, on his spacious brow, 
In his supremest place, 
Greatest of their great race, — 

Shakespeare ! Honor to him, and her 
Who stands his great interpreter, 

Stepped out of his broad page, 

Upon the living stage. 

The unseen hands that shape our fate 
Moulded her strongly, made her great, 

And gave her for her dower 

Abundant life and power. 

To her the sister Muses came, 

Proffered their masks, and promised fame : 

She chose the tragic — rose 

To its imperial woes. 

What queen unqueened is here ? What wife, 
Whose long bright years of loving life 
Are suddenly darkened ? Fate 
Has crushed, but left her great. 

Abandoned for a younger face, 

She sees another fill her place, 
Be more than she has been — 
Most wretched wife and queen. 



117 



H8 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

O royal sufferer ! Patient heart ! 

Lay down thy burdens and depart : 

" Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell." 
They ring her passing bell. 

And thine, thy knell shall soon be rung, 
Lady, the valor of whose tongue, 
That did not urge in vain, 
Stung the irresolute Thane 

To bloody thoughts and deeds of death — ■ 

The evil genius of Macbeth ; 

But thy strong will must break, 
And thy poor heart must ache. 

Sleeping, she sleeps not ; night betrays 
The secret that consumes her days. 
Behold her where she stands, 
And rubs her guilty hands. 

From darkness, by the midnight fire, 
Withered and weird, in wild attire, 
Starts spectral on the scene 
The stern old Gypsy Queen. 

She croons his simple cradle song, 
She will redress his ancient wrong, — 
The rightful heir come back 
With Murder on his track. 

Commanding, crouching, dangerous, kind, 
Confusion in her darkened mind, 
The pathos of her years 
Compels the soul to tears. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ng 

Bring laurel ! Go, ye tragic Three, 
And strip the sacred laurel-tree, 

And at her feet lay down 

Here, now, a triple crown. 

Salve, Regina ! Art and Song, 
Dismissed by thee, shall miss thee long, 

And keep thy memory green — 

Our most illustrious Queen. 

" Mr. Roberts delivered this poem with a calm force 
and an appropriate diversity of expression, which, un- 
der the trying circumstances of the hour, can only be 
described as extraordinary. Seldom in a lifetime 
does it occur to any man to have such an audience as 
listened to this utterance, and found poetry made 
more poetic by the speaker's earnest soul and melodious 
voice. 

" Mr. Bryant, who was received with a tumult of ap- 
plause, next addressed Miss Cushman in a speech of 
equal simplicity and fitness, of which the essential part 
is here printed : — 

1 Madam, — The members of the Arcadian Club have 
desired me to present to you the Crown of Laurel. 
Although of late years little familiar with matters con- 
nected with the stage, I make it a pleasure to comply 
with their request. Be pleased to receive it as both a 
token of their proud admiration of your genius and 
their high esteem for your personal character. You 
remember the line of the poet, Spenser, — 

" The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors." 
Well is that line applied in the present instance. The 



120 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



laurel is the proper ornament for the brows of one who 
has won so eminent and enviable a renown by succes- 
sive conquests in the realm of histrionic art. You have 
taken a queenly rank in your profession. You have 
carried into one department of it after another the tri- 
umphs of your genius. You have interpreted, through 
the eye and ear, to the sympathies of vast assemblages 
of men and women, the words of the greatest dramatic 
writers. What came to your hand in the skeleton form 
you have clothed with sinews and flesh, and given it 
warm blood and a beating heart. Receive, then, the 
laurel crown as a token of what is conceded to you, as 
a symbol of the regal state in your profession to which 
you have risen, and which you so illustriously hold.' 

" Miss Cushman — who during the delivery of the 
poem and address had maintained an attitude in which 
natural dignity and the effort at composure struggled 
with deep feeling and an instinctive wish to deprecate 
so much eulogium — responded in the following 
words : — 

' " Beggar that I am, — I am even poor in thanks," 
but I thank you ! Gentlemen, the heart has no 
speech; its only language is a tear or a pressure of 
the hand, and words very feebly convey or interpret 
its emotions. Yet I would beg you to believe that in 
the three little words I now speak — "I thank you " — 
there are heart-depths which I should fail to express 
better though I should use a thousand other words. 
I thank you, gentlemen, for the great honor you have 
offered to me. I thank you not only for myself, but 
for my whole profession, to which, through and by 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. I2 i 

me, you have paid this very graceful compliment. 
(Applause.) 

" ' If the few words I am about to say savor of ego- 
tism or vainglory, you will, I am sure, pardon me, in- 
asmuch as I am here only to speak of myself ! You 
would seem to compliment me upon an honorable life. 
As I look back upon that life it seems to me that it 
would have been absolutely impossible for me to have 
led any other. In this I have, perhaps, been merci- 
fully helped more than are many of my more beautiful 
sisters in art. I was, by a press of circumstances, 
thrown at an early age into a profession for which I 
had received no special education or schooling, but 
I had already, though so young, been brought face to 
face with necessity. I found life sadly real and in- 
tensely earnest ; and in my ignorance of other ways of 
study, I resolved to take therefrom my text and my 
watchword; to be thoroughly in earnest, intensely 
in earnest, in all my thoughts and in all my actions, 
whether in my profession or out of it, became my one 
single idea. And I honestly believe herein lies the 
secret of my success in life. I do not believe that any 
great success in any art can be achieved without it ! 

" ' I say this to the beginners in my profession ; and I 
am sure all the associates in my art, who have honored 
me with their presence on this occasion, will indorse 
what I say in this. Art is an absolute mistress ; she will 
not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the 
most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand 
triumphs ! (Vehement applause.) 

" ' To you, Gentlemen of the Arcadian Club, and to 



I2 2 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

all who have united to do me honor ; to the younger 
poet who has enthroned me in his verse, and to the 
older poet who brings the prestige of his name and 
fame to add a glory to the crown he offers me; to 
the managers of this theatre, who have so liberally met 
all my wishes and requirements during this engage- 
ment, as well as to the members of the company who 
have so cheerfully seconded my efforts; and last, 
not least, to the members of my profession who have 
so graciously added by their presence to the happiness 
of this occasion, — I return my cordial thanks. 

" ' To my public, — what shall I say ? From the bot- 
tom of my heart I thank you, who have given me al- 
ways consideration, encouragement, and patience ; who 
have been ever my support, my comfort, my main help ! 
I do not now say farewell to you in the usual sense 
of the word. In making my final representations upon 
the mimic scene, in the various cities of the country, I 
have reserved to myself the right of meeting you again 

— where you have made me believe that I give you 
the pleasure, which I receive myself at the same time 

— at the reading desk. (Great excitement.) To you, 
then, I say, may you fare well, and may I fare well, 
until at no distant day we meet again there. Mean- 
while, good, kind friends, good-night ! and God be 
with you.' 

" The whole of this was spoken in a most sympathetic 
way, but the portion of it in which Miss Cushman ad- 
dressed the public had, perhaps, the strongest effect. 
This was very earnest and tender, and there were tones 
in the speaker's voice which meant more than words. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



123 



At the close of this address, after the applause sub- 
sided, Miss Annie Kemp Bowler came forward and 
sang the sweet, familiar song of 'Auld Lang Syne,' 
in the chorus to which the entire throng upon the 
stage, and finally some persons in the audience, hear- 
tily joined ; and amidst this touching music, and the 
mighty plaudits of four thousand spectators, the curtain 
finally fell upon the Farewell appearance of Charlotte 
Cushman. 

" Among the prominent citizens who took part in this 
demonstration, appearing in the boxes and upon the 
stage, were the following : the Hon. Henry G. Steb- 
bins, Governor-elect Samuel J. Tilden, the Hon. Wil- 
liam M. Evarts, Mayor-elect William H. Wickham, 
Algernon S. Sullivan, Charles Watrous, the Hon. Ed- 
wards Pierrepont, the Hon. Clarence A. Seward, the 
Hon. B. W. Griswold, Peter Cooper, Abram S. Hewitt, 
Sidney Webster, the Hon. R. B. Roosevelt, Judge John 
R. Brady, Parke Godwin, G. G. Haven, J. M. Bundy, 
Professor R. Ogden Doremus, Clark Bell, S. N. Salo- 
mon, E. G. Thompson, B. K. Phelps, W. R. Travers, 
W. H. Vanderbilt, Colonel John Hay, E. Agramonte, 
Albert Weber, J. N. Pattison, Charles Roberts, Harry 
Palmer, W. H. Hurlburt, William Stuart, Rufus Hatch, 
J. H. Beard, Homer A. Nelson, D. R. Locke, J. W. 
Carroll, N. Sarony, P. S. Gilmore, Patrick H. Jones, 
J. B. Polk, Harry Jarrett, D. H. Harkins, Edwin R. 
Meade, F. B. Warde, Claude Burroughs, Laurence 
Hutton, C. Delmonico, H. Tissington, J. Wilson Mac- 
donald, F. R. Stockton, Constant Mayer, Daniel D. 
Telford, Edward Moran, Harrison Millard, Thomas 
LeClear, Harry Beckett, and H. B. Dodworth. 



124 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



"... From Booth's Theatre to the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel the street was so packed towards midnight as to 
be almost impassable. A glare of light — from the 
theatre-porch, the torches of the Arcadian procession, 
and the street-lamps — illuminated the turbulent scene • 
and presently, from the direction of Madison Square, 
a burst of Roman candles and rockets added to the 
brilliance and excitement of this memorable midnight 
hour. Miss Cushman entered a carriage opposite the 
stage-door, and amidst the cheers of the populace, and 
a tumult like that of the old-fashioned Fourth-of-July, 
was driven to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where she pres- 
ently appeared on the balcony and greeted the popu- 
lace, while the Ninth Regiment Band performed a 
serenade, and the spaces and vistas of Madison Square 
were illumined with fireworks." 

Of this evening Miss Cushman in one letter wrote as 
follows : — 

" I acted eight times last week, besides that fearful 
affair after the play on Saturday. They say such a 
demonstration has never been made before, not even 
political. The number of people in front of the hotel 
must have been near twenty-five thousand, and it 
looked exactly like the Piazza del Popolo at the fire- 
works. I wish the children could have seen it ; it was 
a thing they should have seen, to remember in connec- 
tion with their 'big mamma.' You must tell them all 
about it, — how the whole big square in front of the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel was crammed with human beings. 
They could not move, they were so densely packed. 

"The sight in the theatre was magnificent. Then 







'W^ i^^ ( AJ^ J ^sr^^. 



^cJ>. 



S*^o 







CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. i 2 $ 

the ceremony at the end, which had made me sick all 
the week, for I was frightened lest I should forget what 
I had to say. Then I did not know what they were 
going to do, for when I would protest against this or 
that they would tell me it should not be, and yet I felt 
sure they would do what they pleased ; and so it turned 
out ; for, though I said that if they carried out their 
plan of white horses and escort with torches, etc., I 
would remain in the theatre all night, yet, when I got 
into my carriage at the private (carpenters') entrance 
on Twenty-third Street, expecting to go quietly to the 
hotel, where I had invited private friends to meet me, I 
found myself surrounded by a mass of human beings 
with torches and fireworks, rockets sent up all the way 
along up to the front entrance of the hotel, and a most 
indescribable noise and confusion. The corridors of 
the hotel were as crowded as the streets outside, and I 
could scarcely make my way along. Then, after a time, 
I had to make my appearance in the balcony, and then 
the shouting was something awful to hear. I was ready 
to drop with fatigue, so I could only wave my handker- 
chief to them, and went in, not getting to my bed be- 
fore half past two." 

Flattering as this demonstration was in one view, many 
regrets were felt and expressed by Miss Cushman's 
friends that she ever consented to give her countenance 
to it ; the feeling being in this, as in other similar cases, 
that the genius that could command such an ovation 
should hold itself above receiving it. 

One week later Miss Cushman again appeared as 
Lady Macbeth in her farewell to Philadelphia. During 



126 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

the evening she was several times called on, and received 
a profusion of magnificent and costly floral tributes. 
After the play she thus addressed the audience : — 

" Ladies and Gentlemen, — Accustomed as I am to 
speak before you the impassioned words of genius, to 
give utterance to the highest ideas of the poet and the 
dramatist, I yet feel that my poor tongue must falter 
when it is called upon to speak, for itself alone, so sad a 
word as Farewell ; or when it tries to thank you fitly for 
all your kindness to me in the past, for all the honor 
you do me in the present. I have never, to the best of 
my knowledge and belief, altered a line of Shakespeare 
in my life ; but now, in taking my leave of the stage, I 
shall beg your permission to paraphrase him, the more 
fitly to express what I would say to you ; for it is his 
peculiar glory that none other in the whole range of 
literature has written words which apply more fully to 
every want of the soul, to every feeling of the heart. 
Let me say, then, partly in his words : — 

' All my service 
In every point twice done, and then done double, 
Were poor and single business to contend 
Against these honors, deep and broad, wherewith 
You have ever loaded me. For those of old, 
And the late dignities heaped up to them, 
I rest your debtor.' 

" In the earlier part of my professional career Phila- 
delphia was for some years my happy home. Here I 
experienced privately the greatest kindness and hospi- 
tality, publicly the utmost goodness and consideration ; 
and I never come to Philadelphia without the affection- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



127 



ate feeling that I am coming home, and to my family. 
This would make my Farewell too hard to be spoken, 
were it not that, though I am taking my leave of the 
stage, I have reserved to myself the right and the pleas- 
ant anticipation of appearing before you, where you 
have flattered me with the belief that my efforts are not 
unacceptable to you, at the reading desk. Until, at no 
distant day, we meet again there, — good-night, and all 
good be with you." 

From Philadelphia Miss Cushman went to Trenton, 
Baltimore, and Washington, giving readings in each 
place, intending to proceed farther West, and finally to 
pass a' portion of the season in California, where she 
had long desired to go ; but by the time she reached 
Cincinnati she was seriously ill. She was forced to 
change her plans, and relinquished that of seeing Cali- 
fornia with much regret. However, she was not long 
idle, for as soon as possible she resumed her readings, 
and after appearing in other places, was again in New 
York before Christmas. 

In February, 1875, Miss Cushman made her last 
appearance in Albany, a few months more than thirty- 
eight years from the time when she had first appeared 
there, Oct. n, 1836, when she acted Lady Macbeth 
to the Macbeth of the elder Booth. On this last occa- 
sion she read in Tweddle Hall ; and after three days 
went to Chicago, where she acted from the 15th to the 
26th of the month ; and appeared on the following 
night in Cincinnati, where she filled an engagement of a 
week before going to St. Louis. She had a hard jour- 
ney, and only reached the latter city in time to hurry to 



I2 8 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

the theatre, which she did in spite of her weariness and 
wretched health. She appeared there five nights, though 
it cost her days of illness ; but she preferred this to 
breaking an engagement. In view of what has been 
told of her malady, her sufferings, and her mental con- 
dition, all this eagerness to act can now be understood ; 
but it is not strange that at the time, when the public 
were in ignorance of the truth, many things were written 
and said which were unjust to Miss Cushman, and 
added their part to what she had to bear. 

Later in the season she read to a house of three thou- 
sand persons in Philadelphia. It was during this winter 
that she saw Ristori as Elizabeth and Mai'ie Antoinette. 
She thus wrote of her : " She is the greatest female 
artist I have ever seen. Such perfect nature, such ease, 
such grace, such elegance of manner, — such as befits 
a queen. . . . Her voice is the most lovely, and her 
mouth the most fascinating, after Titiens, of any artist I 
ever saw." 

In letters written at this time she speaks with doubt 
as to whether she shall be able to fulfil her engage- 
ments or not, but constantly expresses her determina- 
tion to do so if possible. So the winter passed, and 
only those who were near her knew what a period of 
suffering it was, for the public could perceive few signs 
of it ; but once off the stage — in the anteroom, in 
travelling, in company, or alone — her " enemy," as she 
termed her disease, was omnipresent. 

Finally, on May 15, she made her last appearance in 
Boston. During her engagement, which was at the 
Globe Theatre, she had assumed her usual roles, and 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



29 



now, as before, made her farewell as Lady Macbeth. 
We have given, in the first chapter of this book, the 
programine of her first night in public : we now give 
that of the last. 

THE GLOBE THEATRE PROGRAMME. 

Proprietor and Manager .... A rthur Cheney. 

Stage Manager and Director D. W. Waller. 

This evening 

MISS CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 

will impersonate her celebrated role of 
LADY MACBETH, 

assisted by 
MR. D. W. WALLER AS MACBETH. 

Immediately after the performance, Miss Cushman will be 
presented with a testimonial given by a number of her friends, 
on which occasion the presentation address will be delivered 
by Mr. Curtis Guild. 

Saturday Evening, May 15, 1875, 

last appearance on any stage of 

MISS CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN, 

supported by 

MR. D. W. WALLER, 

when will be performed Shakespeare's sublime Tragedy of 
MACBETH. 

Duncan Mr. J. C. Dunn. 

Malcolm » m t Mr. Lin Harris. 

Donalbain \ His Sons ) Miss Wilkes. 



i3o 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



Macbeth ) ( Mr. D. W. Waller. 

Banquo J Gensrals in the Khl » s Arm y j Mr. C. P. Fyffe. 
Macduff ) f Mr. G. B. Waldron. 

Lenox j- Noblemen of Scotland . . . \ Mr. R. B. Darcie. 
Rosse J [ Mr. Stuart Clarke. 

Fleance, Son to Banquo Miss Portia Albey. 

Siward, Earl of Northumberland, General 

of the English Forces Mr. S. Howard. 

Seyton, an Officer attending on Macbeth . Mr. J. P. Deuel. 

Wounded Officer Mr. W. A. Sands. 

Porter Mr. R. Charles. 

First Apparition Miss Lizzie Queen. 

Second Apparition Miss Addie Vankenish. 

Third Apparition Miss Pelby. 

First Officer Mr. Geo. Connor. 

Second Officer Mr John Taylor. 

First Murderer Mr. J. Pitman. 

Second Murderer Mr. T. B. Francis. 

Physician Mr. C. Pierson. 

First Witch Mr. E. Coleman. 

Second Witch . Miss Annie Hayes. 

Third Witch Mr. J. H. Cor nor. 

Lady Macbeth . Miss Cushman. 

Gentlewoman . . Miss Athena. 

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Attendants, etc., by the Ladies and 
Gentlemen of the Company. 

The following account of the evening is from the 
Boston Daily Advertiser. It was a far more quiet 
affair than that in New York, but was a heartfelt testi- 
monial of respect to Miss Cushman and of pride in 
her great achievements : — 

" The scene at the Globe Theatre on Saturday even- 
ing was one that will remain long in the memories of 
those present, and as an occasion of great pleasure and 
also one that excited sentiments of regret that America's 
greatest tragic actress had for the last time appeared in 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



131 



the characters which she has been wont to assume. 
The theatre presented a fine appearance when the cur- 
tain was rung up for the performance of ' Macbeth,' 
the play selected by Miss Cushman for her farewell to 
the stage, and among the vast audience many gentle- 
men might have been seen who. have not been familiar 
with the theatres of the last two decades. There were 
among those present representatives of the best of Bos- 
ton's social, mercantile, and professional circles, and 
few public gatherings have better represented its cul- 
ture and refinement. 

"Miss Cushman, on her appearance, was greeted 
with prolonged applause, which was often repeated in 
the course of the play. At the conclusion of the last 
act, a selection of national airs was performed by the 
orchestra, the audience remaining to participate in the 
closing exercises. When the curtain was raised again, 
the stage presented the appearance of a drawing-room, 
and in its centre stood a gilt table upon which rested a 
floral crown with laurel wreath. Upon either side 
were placed bronze statuettes of Mercury and Fortune, 
about thirty inches high, and resting upon handsomely 
carved pedestals. Other floral decorations were ar- 
ranged about the stage. After a moment's pause, Mr. 
Cheney entered from the left, leading Miss Cushman, 
whom he briefly presented. 

" Mr. Curtis Guild then addressed Miss Cushman as 
follows : — 

" ' Miss Cushman , and Ladies and Gentlemen, — The 
retirement from the dramatic profession of one who 
has so long been recognized as one of its most distin- 



132 



CHARLOTTE C USB MAN. 



guished representatives, and who has done so much to 
elevate dramatic art, is in itself an event of more than 
ordinary moment. But when it occurs here, in the 
native city of the artist, and among those who have 
followed her from the commencement of her eventful 
career with hope and admiration, and claimed her as 
our own with pride at its culmination, it is felt that the 
occasion should not be permitted to pass without an 
attempt to express, in the most decided manner, the 
feelings of your many friends, who deem it a privilege 
to do you honor. Now that you are about to cast 
aside the robes of the artist forever ; to abdicate, not 
resign, the dramatic sceptre of the American stage, — 
for who is to wield that which you have so long swayed 
as queen ? — now that you are to close your eventful 
and successful career with a fame honorably won and 
name untarnished, — you that have " outstripped all 
praise and made it halt behind you," — it is not sur- 
prising that every true lover of dramatic art hastens to 
do eager homage, and that hosts of warm and hearty 
friends should press forward for the last hand-grasp of 
her whom they honor and respect. 

" ' We cannot part with the great actress of our 
time but with emotion and tender regard. We remem- 
ber the many hours of intellectual enjoyment for which 
we are indebted to her; how the characters of the 
great bard, by the potent mystic wand of her creative 
genius, have appeared to actually live before us, as we 
were thrilled with horror by the fierce ambition of the 
murderous wife of the Scottish Thane, or our hearts 
pulsated with pity for the wrongs of the noble and 



CHARL O TTE CUSHMAN. 



133 



abused queen of the bluff and bloody Henry, or beat 
with emotion for the gentle lovers of Verona. And 
what additional interest has been lent to one, at least, 
of those remarkable creations of the great Scottish 
novelist, by a portraiture of character that shall ever 
live, while the history of dramatic art is chronicled, as 
one of the most wonderful and impressive ever pre- 
sented upon the dramatic stage. It may truthfully be 
said, after witnessing your impersonations, yours is 

" The spell o'er hearts 

Which only acting lends, — 
The youngest of the sister Arts, 

Where all their beauty blends. 
For ill can Poetry express 

Full many a tone of thought sublime ; 
And Painting, mute and motionless, 

Steals but a glance of time ; 
But, by the mighty Actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come, — 
Verse ceases to be airy thought, 

And Sculpture to be dumb." 

" ' The player's profession, we well know, from the 
earliest days, when in Greece it was held honorable 
and in Rome a despised vocation, has been assailed 
by fierce opponents. The great poet of our time him- 
self, we read in the "Annals of the English Stage," 
came into the world when the English portion of it 
was ringing with the denunciations of Archbishop 
Grindal against the profession which the child in his 
humble cradle at Stratford-upon-Avon was about to 
ennoble forever. We need not, however, go back as 
far as Shakespeare's time to cite the fierce opposition 



!34 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

that dramatic art has encountered, or enumerate the 
obstacles that the dramatic artist must overcome. The 
discouragements in the thorny path of the profession 
may well make genius, even when accompanied by 
resolution, almost shrink from attempting it. Let us 
remember, however, that the art has been sanctioned 
by the great, befriended by the good, and supported 
by the people ; and, moreover, bear in mind that in 
this profession, whose members are in the full blaze 
of public observation and scrutiny, who are too often 
censured without reason or condemned without excuse, 
who are too frequently judged as a class for the errors 
of individuals, — those who do pass the fiery ordeal 
unscathed, who stand before us the real representatives 
of the dramatic profession, deserve from us our gar- 
lands as the exponents of a great and glorious art ; and, 
upon the present occasion, more than that, — the high 
regard that genius, combined with nobleness of mind 
and purity of character, exacts from all true and honest 
hearts. We have beheld with pride, in our modern 
Athens, the laurels awarded our warriors, the bays be- 
stowed upon our poets, and our scholars and orators 

" Win the wreath of fame 
And write on memory's scroll a deathless name." 

And with equal exultation is it that we contemplate the 
addition that has been made to that brilliant circle of 
dramatic lights which counts in its constellation a Gar- 
rick, a Kemble, and a Siddons, of our own American 
luminary which sparkles with equal brilliancy to that of 
any of its great associates. We come here to-night to 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ^ 

accord that homage which genius does not ask, but 
commands; to give you, not evidence of popularity, 

— mere popularity which is as the brightness of the 
passing meteor or the fleeting splendors of the rainbow, 

— but to express an appreciation of genius and the 
kind regard of genuine friendship. As the humble 
instrument of those who have honored me with this 
pleasing but difficult task, I am aware that their senti- 
ments have been but imperfectly expressed ; but in 
asking you to accept, in the name of your friends in 
this your native city, this evidence of their regard, I 
know I express their feelings in saying, " the greatest is 
behind ; " for beyond this comparatively trifling token 
of esteem of your merits as an artist, is a friendship 
which, though death may sever, time shall not destroy. 
And in conclusion let me say, that though you may now 
pass from the mimic stage, distant be the day when 
your exit shall be made from the great stage on which 
we men and women all are merely players ; though you 
may not have our hands in future before the curtain, 
they will still cordially grasp yours in the social circle 
which you adorn as modestly as you have upheld the 
dramatic art worthily and honorably. And now, when 
we depart, and when 

" Fallen is the curtain, the last scene is o'er, 
The fav'rite actress treads the stage no more," 

we shall each and all of us remember that though 

" Many the parts you played, yet to the end 
Your best were those of sister, lady, friend." ' 



136 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" "When Miss Cushman could sufficiently master the 
emotions which controlled her, she replied in the fol- 
lowing terms : — 

' " The less I deserve, 
The more merit lies in your bounty." 

" ' Gentlemen, — Your unexpected kindness deprives 
me of all words in which to thank you, and the few I 
can find will be but poor and feeble expressions of 
what I feel. But I would beg you to believe all that 
the heart prompts, as my deep and earnest appreciation 
of the honor you have done me. It is especially grate- 
ful because it comes to me here, in my own native city, 
and at the hands of those who, from the beginning to 
the end of my career, from my first appearance on the 
stage to my last appearance, have been truly 

" Brothers, friends, and countrymen." 

In leaving the stage finally, it has always been my 
intention to make my last appearance in Boston ; and 
this suggests to me a little explanation, which, with your 
permission, I would like to make on this occasion. It 
has been implied, if not declared, and very often 
repeated in the newspapers throughout the country, 
that I should not have appeared again upon the stage 
after the great ovation which was paid to me in New 
York. At least, so the gentlemen of the press decided ; 
and many comments have been made upon me, in the 
papers, derogatory to my dignity as a woman and my 
position as an artist. I have passed on, in the even 
tenor of my way, little regarding, on my own account, 
these would-be censors and judges ; but it seems to me 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



W 



proper that I should explain to you, in whose esteem I 
have a long-vested interest which must not be endan- 
gered without a strong and earnest protest on my part, 
that if my last engagement in New York was announced 
as my farewell to the stage, it was done by no act 
or will or word of mine. I had no such intention ; 
indeed, I could not have had, for I had already made 
many other engagements for the season, which I have 
been endeavoring to fulfil, concluding, as was always 
my dearest wish, here in my own city of Boston, which 
I have always dearly loved, and where I had rather 
have been born than on any other spot of the habita- 
ble globe. I hope I have not tired your patience, but I 
could not rest without endeavoring to remove even the 
shadow of a shade which might cloud the perfect har- 
mony between me and my public, who I hope and trust 
will accept this explanation from me. Looking back 
upon my career, I think I may, "without vainglory," 
say that I have not, by any act of my life, done dis- 
credit to the city of my birth.' 

" Then, turning to the gentlemen of the committee of 
presentation, Miss Cushman continued : — 

" ' So now, with a full but more free heart, I revert to 
you. To this last beautiful manifestation of your good 
will towards me, and to all who have so graciously 
interested themselves to do me this honor, I can but 
say,— 

" More is their due 
Than more than all can pay." 

" ' Believe me, I shall carry away with me in my 
retirement no memory sweeter than my associations 



133 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



with Boston and my Boston public. From my full 
heart, God bless you, and Farewell ! ' " 

After leaving Boston Miss Cushman read a few times 
in Western New York, and, on June 2, in Easton, Penn- 
sylvania, after which I find no record of any public 
appearance. She then went to Lenox, Massachusetts, 
to superintend the fitting up of a house which she had 
purchased there. She found it best to leave Newport 
as the summer advanced, when the change from the 
sea-shore to the mountain air was beneficial to her. 
During this, her last summer at Newport, she was very 
ill, and when at last she revived sufficiently to go to 
Lenox, the bracing air acted like a charm upon her, 
restoring her to a certain degree of strength. Miss 
Stebbins thus speaks of Miss Cushman's plans regard- 
ing this new home : — 

"The pleasure and enjoyment she found in this small 
spot were delightful to see ; all its appointments were 
of a simple, homely kind, which added the charm of 
contrast to the elegant attractions of her Newport home. 
She brought with her there the same simplicity of taste 
and adaptability to her surroundings which made for 
her a home wherever she might be. She always enjoyed 
a return to the modest housekeeping of her early days, 
when Sallie and herself used to rough it so contentedly 
together. Everything interested her, on the small scale 
as on the large one ; her mind was busy, active, sug- 
gestive, and full of purpose and energy. She had no 
room for petty cares or trivial conventionalities; she 
made her surroundings suitable and appropriate, and 
where she was, no one ever thought of anything else. 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



139 



The little place would have been as complete in its way 
as the larger one, if her life had been spared ; but she 
was only permitted to enjoy a few days of it at this 
time, and again, later in the season, a few weeks, after 
a long and severe illness at Newport, which for a time 
seemed to make it doubtful if she might ever see it 
again." 



140 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHAPTER XI. 

1875-1876. 

Miss Cushman still cherished a hope of finding some 
alleviation of her malady, and decided to put herself 
under a new mode of treatment ; for that purpose she 
went to Boston in October, 1875, and established her- 
self at the Parker House. She suffered terribly, but she 
bore up bravely ; saw her friends, and interested herself 
in literary matters and subjects of general interest. 
Those who saw her frequently knew by the changes in 
her face that she was in pain ; but she seldom men- 
tioned her health, and when she did, gave as few words 
as possible to it. Until within two days of her death 
she wrote to her family in Newport each day. Some 
of her letters were very cheerful, and even as late as 
February 3 she* spoke of her going to California as a 
future possibility. The day before Christmas she 
wrote : — 

" This is not the greeting you should have for your 
Christmas ; but it is better you should know exactly 
where I am, and that we may have to defer the cele- 
bration of our Christmas to another and happier day. 
Just feel as though to-morrow was any common day, — 
for is not Christ here to us every day? And we will 
show our belief in this by trying to have faith and trust, 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. I4I 

and make the celebration of it when that trust and faith 
are borne out and justified by time ! I grieve for you, 
dear, more than for myself, though I am a dreadful baby 
over my pain. It is very hard for you ; but the hard 
places must come in our lives, and perhaps we should 
not know how to enjoy the pleasures, but for the corre- 
sponding glooms of the pains of life. Keep up a good 
heart. You are loved and thought of as you would be, 
and that must give you courage for the battle which is 
before you as before us all ! " 

On Christmas day she again wrote : — 

" The doctor is very hopeful, and says I am better. 
When I hear him talk I am ashamed that I give way 
under pain and cause such suffering to those I love ; 
but I cannot help it. It is beyond me, and those who 
love me must bear with me ; and if ever I get well I will 
repay them with interest in mirthfulness and joy until 
they shall wonder at the merry old woman ! " 

Her friends, however, were very despondent, and 
soon after the New Year, 1876, she was very low. She 
then gave minute directions for her funeral services, and 
her burial in the lot which she had purchased at Mount 
Auburn, — a spot which she loved because it commanded 
a view of Boston. After this time she again rallied, and 
even seemed to others to be positively better for a time. 
On January 27, after hearing of the sorrow of a friend, 
she wrote : — 

" Ah, I am ashamed of the outcry I have made over 
mere physical pain, when the world is so full of ' cark- 
ing care,' which corrodes the soul ! God forgive me 
for fretting and complaining. I have not known what 



142 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



else to do, and impotence is my curse and cross. Ah, 
please his infinite mercy that I am ever well again, will 
we not be happy and good, and love him more and 
more every day? " 

Finally, after this season of apparent mending, on 
Feb. 12, 1876, while walking in the corridor of the 
hotel, she took a cold, pneumonia ensued, and six 
days later all was over. She did not suffer pain at last, 
neither did she realize what she was passing through. 
The evening before her death she wished to have Low- 
ell's poem of " Columbus " read to her, and when the 
reader hesitated Miss Cushman supplied the word or 
line with perfect clearness. This incident suggested 
the following lines, signed " C. T. E." — 

" For wast not thou, too, going forth alone 
To seek new land across an untried sea ? 
New land, — yet to thy soul not all unknown, 
Nor yet far off, was that blest shore to thee. 

" For thou hadst felt the mighty mystery 

That on man's heart and life doth ever rest, 
A shadow of that glorious world to be, 

Where love's pure hope is with fruition blest. 

" Thine was a conflict none else knew but God, 
Who gave thee, to endure it, strength divine : 
Alone with him the wine-press thou hast trod, 
And Death, his angel, seals the victory thine. 

" The narrow sea of death thou now hast passed ; 
The mist is lifted from the unseen land ; 
The voyage ends, the shining throng at last 

Meet thee with welcome on the heavenly strand." 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



143 



Thus Charlotte Cushman passed from life in all her 
fortitude to hope and to bear. Doubtless, had she 
known that the hour was at hand she would still have 
been calm and brave ; perhaps in those last uncon- 
scious hours bright visions waited on her passing spirit, 
and as so often heretofore she had called them up in 
imagination, now in truth might she have said, — 

" Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop 
Invite me to a banquet ; whose bright faces 
Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun ? " 



On February 21, for an hour before the funeral, the 
public was admitted to the room in which she lay. 
The funeral was in King's Chapel, and the ceremonies 
were very simple. Many beautiful flowers were sent 
from far and near, symbols of the sweet memories of 
her which her friends and associates cherished. 

All over the country the papers bore witness to the 
general feeling of loss occasioned by her death, and all 
united in awarding her that enviable fame which belongs 
alone to the great men and women who rise to their 
heights through their own merits and labors, a fame in 
which she can never be superseded in the history of the 
American drama, and one which should be a guiding 
star and an inspiring force to those who seek to follow 
where she led. 

Some of the tributes paid her at this time are copied 
here. William Winter wrote : — 

"There is something so awfully impressive in the 
vanishing of a great genius and a great force of noble 



I4 4 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

intellect and character out of this world, that reverence 
must pause before the spectacle, no less in humanity 
than sorrow. The historian of our time will review 
many important and significant lives, and will lay the 
laurel upon many a storied tomb ; but he will honor no 
genius more stately or more singular than that which 
now sleeps in the coffin of Charlotte Cushman. . . . 
To the last she was an image of majesty. The pain 
that consumed her suffering body could never quell her 
royal spirit. She could look back upon a good life; 
she was sustained by religious faith ; she felt upon her 
gray hair the spotless crown of honor ; she met death 
as she had met life, a victor ; and she has passed from 
the world with all the radiance of her glory about her, 
like sunset from a mountain peak, that vanishes at once 
into the heavens. 

"The greatness of Charlotte Cushman was that of 
an exceptional, because grand and striking person- 
ality, combined with extraordinary power to embody 
the highest ideals of majesty, pathos, and appalling an- 
guish. She was not a great actress merely, but she was 
a great woman. She did not possess the dramatic fac- 
ulty apart from other faculties, and conquer by that 
alone ; but, having that faculty in almost unlimited ful- 
ness, she poured forth through its channel such resour- 
ces of character, intellect, moral strength, soul and per- 
sonal magnetism as marked her for a genius of the first 
order while they made her an irresistible force in art. 
When she came upon the stage she filled it with the 
brilliant vitality of her presence. Every movement that 
she made was winningly characteristic. Her least ges- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



145 



ture was eloquence. Her voice, which was soft or sil- 
very, or deep and mellow, according as emotion affected 
it, used now and then to tremble, and partly to break, 
with tones that were pathetic beyond description. 
These were denotements of the fiery soul that smoul- 
dered beneath her grave exterior, and gave iridescence 
to every form of art that she embodied. Sometimes 
her whole being seemed to become petrified in a silent 
suspense more thrilling than any action, as if her imagi- 
nation were suddenly inthralled by the tumult and awe 
of its own vast proportions." . . . 

The following letter was written by Mr. Lawrence 
Barrett : — 

" Charlotte Cushman is dead. Before the shock of 
this news has passed away it cannot be improper to re- 
call to her professional brethren the great loss we sus- 
tain by this sudden departure. After a long life of toil, 
laden with years and honors, she sleeps at last. That 
crown which she has worn for so many years undisputed 
now lies upon a coffin beside which a whole nation will 
mourn. The world contained no greater spirit, no no- 
bler woman. Her genius filled the world with admira- 
tion, and the profession which she adorned and ruled 
must long await her successor. This is not the place, 
nor is mine the pen, to write her history ; larger space 
and abler hands will see that duty performed. These 
lines are traced by one who loved her living, and weeps 
for her now dead. Her career is an incentive and an 
example to all the workers in our noble art. A woman 
of genius, industrious and religious, her best education 
was obtained within the circle of her calling. Almost 



I4 6 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAIV. 

masculine in manner, there was yet a gentleness in 
her which only her intimates could know. The voice 
which crooned the lullaby of the Bertrams so touch- 
ingly came from a heart as gentle as infancy. To all 
who labor in the realms of art, and to my profession 
most especially, the loss of this day will be a severe 
one. Bigotry itself must stand abashed before the life 
of our dead Queen, whose every thought and act were 
given for years to an art which ignorance and envy have 
battled against in vain for centuries. To her, our Queen, 
we say : ' Peace and farewell ! We shall not look upon 
her like again.' " 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe ended her tribute to Miss 
Cushman thus : — 

" No aesthetic crown is loftier than that of the artist 
who has worthily walked in this true majesty of life 
upon the scene, receiving at every step the tribute of 
grateful and admiring hearts. 

" Our friend had this true crowning. When we re- 
call her form and action, we must rehearse the lines of 
Elizabeth Browning : — 

'Juno, where is now the glory 
Of thy regal port and tread ? 
Will they lay, for evermore, thee 
In thy straight, low, golden bed ? 
Will thy queendom ail lie hid 
Meekly under either lid ? ' 

" But the crown of all crowns is that of character, and 
in this respect our friend's record does not belie her 
broad brow and generous smile. Laborious, faithful, 
affectionate, tender, her daily life fulfilled all that her 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



147 



art-prophecies promised. Rich were they who dwelt 
within the cordial influence of her words and acts. 
Bright and sunny was the home which her presence 
illuminated. Distant friends turned towards her with 
loving memory, and those who needed and deserved 
friendship found it in her. 

" So let our tributes to her memory be heart tributes 
all. She loved much, served much, earned by hard 
work a noble reputation, and has left an example in 
which her race is enriched." 

In the autumn of 1880 a monument was placed over 
the grave of Miss Cushman, at Mount Auburn, by her 
nephew, Mr. E. C. Cushman of Newport, Rhode Island. 

This is a perfectly plain granite shaft, about thirty- 
three feet in height. It was erected with no ceremonies, 
and bears no inscription save the name of Charlotte 
Cushman. 

No words written by another can give the full insight 
into Miss Cushman's nature that her own letters fur- 
nish, and Miss Stebbins has permitted the use of such 
letters as are wished for from her own biography of her 
friend. 

Those which follow reveal much of her personal feel- 
ing and her mode of reasoning, and give certain expe- 
riences in her own graphic and forceful manner. The 
first quotations are extracts from her letters to a young 
friend who was afterwards successful as an actress, and 
played in both England and America. 



I4 8 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHAPTER XII. 



LETTERS. 



" I should advise you to get to work ; all ideal study 
of acting, without the trial or opportunity of trying 
our efforts and conceivings upon others, is, in my 
mind, lost time. Study while you act. Your concep- 
tion of character can be formed while you read your 
part, and only practice can tell you whether you are 
right. You would, after a year of study in your own 
room, come out unbenefited, save in as far as self- 
communion ever must make us better and stronger ; 
but this is not what you want just now. Action is 
needed. Your vitality must in some measure work 
itself off. You must suffer, labor, and wait, before you 
will be able to grasp the true and the beautiful. You 
dream of it now j the intensity of life that is in you, the 
spirit of poetry which makes itself heard by you in 
indistinct language, needs work to relieve itself and be 
made clear. I feel diffident about giving advice to you, 
for you know your own nature better than any one 
else can ; but I should say to you, Get to work in the 
best way you can. All your country work will be 
wretched : you will faint by the way ; but you must 
rouse your great strength and struggle on, bearing 
patiently your cross on the way to your crown ! God 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ^9 

bless you and prosper your undertakings. I know the 
country theatres well enough to know how utterly 
alone you will be in such companies ; but keep up 
a good heart ; we have only to do well what is given 
us to do, to find heaven. . . . 

" I think if you have to wait for a while it will do 
you no harm. You seem to me quite frantic for imme- 
diate work ; but teach yourself quiet and repose in the 
time you are waiting. With half your strength I could 
bear to wait and labor with myself to conquer fretti?tg. 
The greatest power in the world is shown in conquest 
over self. More life will be worked out of you by 
fretting than all the stage-playing in the world. . . . 

" I was exceedingly pleased to hear such an account 
of your first appearance. You were quite right in all 
that was done, and I am rejoiced at your success. Go 
on ; persevere. You will be sure to do what is right ; 
for your heart is in the right place, your head is sound, 
your reading has been good. Your mind is so much 
better and stronger than any other person's whom I 
have known enter the profession, that your career is 
plain before you. 

" But I will advise you to remain in your native 
town for a season, or at least the winter. You say you 
are afraid of remaining among people who know you. 
Don't have this feeling at all. You will have to be 
more particular in what you do, and the very feeling 
that you cannot be indifferent to your audience will 
make you take more pains. Besides this, you will be 
at home, which is much better for a time ; for then at 
first you do not have to contend with a strange home 



50 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



as well as a strange profession. I could talk to you a 
volume upon this matter, but it is difficult to write. 
At all events, I hope you will take my counsel and 
remain at home this winter. It is the most wretched 
thing imaginable to go from home a novice into such a 
theatre as any of those in the principal towns. 

" Only go on and work hard, and you will be sure 
to make a good position. With regard to your faults, 
what shall I say? Why, that you will try hard to over- 
come them. I don't think they would be perceived, 
save by those who perhaps imagine that your attach- 
ment for me has induced you to join the profession. 
I have no mannerisms, I hope ; therefore any imita- 
tion of me can only be in the earnest desire to do what 
you can do, as well as you can. Write to me often ; 
ask of me what you will ; my counsel is worth little, 
but you shall command it if you need it." 

The following letter, written from Rome in 1862, 
gives the religious views of Miss Cushman, in her own 
words : — 

" To-morrow will be the last day of the year ! I am 
glad when a winter is over, though sad to think I am so 
much nearer to the end. The days fly by so rapidly ; 
the Saturdays when I must post come round so soon ! 
I stand sometimes appalled at the thought of how my 
life is flying away, and how soon will come the end to 
all of this probation, and of how little I have done or 
am doing to deserve all the blessings by which I am 
surrounded. But that God is perfect, and that my 
love for him is without fear, I should be troubled in 
the thought that I am not doing all I should, in this 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



151 



sphere, to make myself worthy of happiness in the 
next. Do you quite believe in angels with feather 
wings and flowing draperies and perfect beauty, and a 
heaven in the clouds? or do you believe that man, 
a little lower than the angels, animated by the ' heat 
spark,' wears out his physical in the improvement of 
his moral, and that this ' heat spark ' then returns to 
the original centre of all, to be again given out, through 
its own purification, helping thus to leaven the whole 
mass, and so doing God's work ! — or what do you 
believe ? You say you ' feel the need of a Saviour ! ' 
Do you think Christ more your Saviour, except that he 
has been the founder of a creed which has been a 
sign and symbol for so many who needed a sign and 
symbol? Do you believe that God was more the 
Father of Christ than he is of you ? Do you need any 
mediator between you and your Father? Can the 
Saviour Christ help you more than the Saviour Con- 
science ? I don't believe in Atheism ; so you see one 
may doubt even disbelief; but I should be glad to 
know what your creed is, if you put it into any form. 
Creeds invented by man may and do find echoes, as 
we find around us those who can give us better coun- 
sel than we can find for ourselves in ordinary matters ; 
how much more, then, in those which are purely spirit- 
ual ! But creeds are creeds, after all ; and whether 
propounded by Jesus, or any other of woman born, 
they are simply scaffoldings which surround the temple, 
and by which different thinkers mount to their distinct 
and separate entrances. I find it possible to go to 
any church and find God ! A good and earnest man, 



152 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



though a self-elected priest, who leads a pure and noble 
life, who works for the good of others rather than his 
own gratification, who leads me to think higher and 
better things, is my Saviour ; all great, good, noble, 
high aspirations save me. Vainglory in myself or my 
doings, self-assertion, pride, are often but the effects 
of education ; and though they may be and are the 
clogs of flesh around me, they cannot prevent me 
from seeing God any and every where, and they can- 
not prevent me from being saved, if I will ! Oh, this 
question is so difficult, so hard ; and yet, if we can 
prove by our lives that we love God in our neighbor, it 
is so easy ! We are asked by all believers to love 
God, and this is all. If we love, we cannot wound ! 
God is perfect ; we cannot hurt him as we do one an- 
other, for he sees in and around and through, and the 
motive is the hurt. I believe that some of the purest 
lives are among those whom we call Deists, — who 
believe in God, but not in revealed religion. No one 
can doubt a cause, and there must have been a first 
cause, and whether we call it God, or nature, or law of 
the universe, it amounts to the same thing ; and, trust 
me, every human being believes in a God. For me, I 
believe in all things good coming from God, in all 
forms, in all ways ; my faith is firm in him and his 
love. I believe in instincts marvellously. I doubt 
any power to take from me the love of God, and I 
would guard particularly against the evil effects of 
injudicious or careless education for myself or others. 
Original sin is the excess or weakness or folly of par- 
ents, which entails upon us evils which we have to 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. j^ 

combat, and struggle harder in consequence of; hence 
the necessity of each human being striving to lead a 
pure life, a life of unselfishness, a life of devotion to — 
well — doing everything a human being can do for the 
largest good of all. 

" A devotion which drives one to a nunnery, to a 
life of self-seclusion, of prayer actual, and nothing else, 
does not seem to me devotion such as God needs and 
wants; and yet it may be that this example is also 
necessary in God's world, and each man or woman 
may be doing His work ! But I must not write on 
such topics. I am not sufficiently clear in my expres- 
sion to help anybody ; and I only intended at first to 
reply to the last sentence of your letter, in which you 
spoke of your ' need of a Saviour,' and of your going to 
such or such a church. Well, it matters very little. 
All thinking human beings (women especially) have to 
pass through all these thinkings. The only thing to be 
guarded against is the narrowing influence of Mrs. 
Grundy. Think in, but be sure also to think out 
Many young people are apt to jump into one of these 
enclosures, and then, for fear, are afraid to jump or 
crawl out, — not from fear of God, but fear of the 
humans around them ! Don't suffer yourself to be 
narrowed in your thinkings. If you do, it is because 
of some part of your mind not having been healthily 
exercised, and thus the restraint day by day will cramp 
you more. I don't like too much this pride of intel- 
lect, any more than I do the idea of any and every 
man being able to be a priest simply because he chooses 
that as his vocation. There are many priests who 



154 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMA.V. 



never see churches, as there are many devils within 
the fold ! Did you ever read very thinkingly ' Spiri- 
dion ' (George Sand) ? She was in this coil when 
she wrote it, and, being greatly imaginative, of course 
the book is very wide of the mark for many ; but it 
is possible to get something from it in spite of its 
mysticism. 

" I go to the English Church here, because I think 
it right to go somewhere, and I cannot understand 
Italian well enough to follow their preaching, though 
the earnestness and intensity and eloquence of the 
priests often stirs me to my soul, in spite of the tram- 
mels of language. Therefore I go to the English 
Church ; and I observe their observances, because 
I think it is unkind, by any resistance on my part 
when I am among them, to raise doubts or questions 
or remarks when it is unnecessary and productive of 
no good result. But their scaffolding is no more 
for me, and does not influence me any more, than 
that of the Catholic or the Presbyterian. God saw 
the creatures he created ; he knew their capabilities ; 
he will judge us each by our light. The child shut 
away from light is not answerable for its blindness. 
Education is the influences around our childhood, not 
merely books and school, but example, and we are 
only responsible according to our light. But we must 
not wilfully shut our eyes when we can be led into the 
light, which is to be tempered to our abilities ; only 
don't condemn others because they do not see as we 
do, and we are not able to see with their eyes. Every 
human being who goes to sleep awakes believing in 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. r cc 

God, whatever he may call it. There are more good 
Deists in the world than show themselves, and there is 
more pride than one wishes to see ; but education 
is to blame, not instinct, and so we have to go so far 
back to find the original plague-spot, that one is apt to 
sit down by the wayside in terror at the journey ! " 



1$Q CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

[The following paper has been written for this book by Mr. 
Wm. T. W. Ball, and is a valuable addition to the opinions of 
critics already quoted. 

Many of the most flattering notices which have preceded this 
were written under the excitement which Miss Cushman's act- 
ing had produced, and before the influence of her personal 
magnetism had passed off ; but when one who understands his 
subject as thoroughly as Mr. Ball does, can write with his en- 
thusiasm regarding Miss Cushman so long after " the silver cord 
was loosed " and " the golden bowl broken," his praise is praise 
indeed.— C. E. C] 

It is a fact worthy of note that the most celebrated 
actors and actresses — the very brightest luminaries of 
the dramatic profession — in the outset of their careers 
upon the stage have had no conception of the peculiar 
bent of their genius, or whether, with the greatest effect 
and success, they were destined to wear the sock or 
the buskin. Many of the most famous comedians of 
our day have started out permeated with naught but 
tragic aspirations ; while, on the other hand, some of 
the most noted tragedians, in after life, commenced as 
comedians. The brightest ornament of the American 
stage (Edwin Forrest) at one time cherished no higher 
ambition than to become a circus rider, and it is on 



CHARL O TTE CUSHMAN. 



157 



record that on one occasion he made a flying leap 
through a barrel of red fire, singeing his hair and 
eyebrows terribly. 

It is unquestionably true, as the poet Cowper tells 
us, that 

" God gives to every man 
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, 
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall 
Just in the niche he was ordained to fill." 

Of this truth there is a striking example in the pro- 
fessional life of Charlotte Cushman. The Supreme 
Power better knew her destiny and her great capaci- 
ties than she did herself. The woman proposed a life 
on the lyric stage ; the Deity disposed of the life as 
that of the grandest tragic actress which America, up 
to the present day, has produced. Becoming, from 
the force of unforeseen circumstances, unadapted for 
the career of a great songstress, Miss Cushman, in- 
stinctively as it were, following the bent of her genius, 
developed into the matchless actress. In the outset of 
her career upon the stage it was fortunate for Miss 
Cushman that she received a thorough schooling in 
all the intricate minuticz of her profession, — a schooling 
which is as essentially necessary to the development of 
the actor and actress as are light and heat to the de- 
velopment of the flower. " Lowliness is young ambi- 
tion's ladder," and Miss Cushman, with more ability, 
with more true genius, than all the fledgling tragedi- 
ennes of the present day put together, did not hesitate 
to commence on the very lowest round of her profes- 
sion, in order the more securely to reach its topmost 



j^S CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN". 

height. No matter how much of native ability an aspir- 
ant for dramatic fame may possess, nor with how much 
of purely mimetic talent that aspirant may be endowed, 
it is nevertheless next to an impossibility that such an 
one can step from the drawing-room or the seminary 
on to the stage, and successfully contest for its honors 
with the matured, the cultivated, and the well-grounded 
artist. No woman who has graced the stage,' within 
the present century at least — a century .redolent of the 
genius of Sarah Siddons — was possessed of a greater 
capacity for such a feat, admitting for the moment its 
possibility, than Charlotte Cushman ; but the strength 
of her intellect caused her, when on the very thresh- 
old of her profession, not to ignore the fact that, 
recognized as her abilities even then were, there was 
something to be learned outside of mere declamation 
and the faculty of making a few startling "points." 
On the contrary, she bore in mind that the funda- 
mental necessity, the chief corner-stone, as it were, of 
the dramatic structure she was about to rear, should 
consist not of a superficial but of a thorough and abso- 
lute knowledge of the "business " and traditions of the 
stage. The drudgery of the profession must often have 
proved galling to a woman of the strength of intellect 
which Miss Cushman possessed, but, believing in its 
necessity, her way was thenceforth 

" Like to the Pontick sea 
"Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on." 

I have heard Miss Cushman say that in her early 
days upon the stage she had no especial predilection 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



159 



for any one particular line of dramatic business. She 
was a firm believer, not alone in her own powers, but 
that her destiny was to make a name and fame. Her 
idea was (she was then a young woman, let it be borne 
in mind, of about one and twenty) that she would be 
equally good in tragedy and comedy. Those who 
remember her in the very plenitude of her strength, 
people who are competent to judge understanding^ of 
dramatic representations, and possessed of the ability 
to analyze character and appreciate motives, will con- 
fess that Miss Cushman's comedy parts, charmingly 
as they were conceived, and abounding as they did 
in touches of tender grace, bore, in general, no 
comparison to her tragic assumptions. While she 
had a penchant for occasionally appearing in comedy 
down almost to her latest days on the stage, and 
notably as Mrs. Simpson, in John Poole's comedy of 
" Simpson & Co." in which she "stood up peerless," 
yet she herself was free to own that her highest achieve- 
ments and most pronounced successes were made in 
Shakespearian tragedy. 

It was in 

" My salad days, 
When I was green in judgment," 

and so long ago as 1837, that I first saw Miss Cush- 
man play. It was at the Tremont Theatre, then under 
the management of that most accomplished actor and 
manager, Thomas Barry. The play was "Macbeth," 
and Miss Cushman was the Lady. 'Twas a coinci- 
dence that this should have been the first as well as 
the last part which it was my good fortune to see her 



!5o CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN: 

perform. Even at this early period of her career on 
the stage, which up to this time had covered but three 
seasons, she is said to have given evidence of the dawn- 
ing of that greatness which she ultimately achieved. I 
have heard good judges of acting say, and especially 
the late Edward D. Clarke, that while at this time she 
displayed great strength of intellect, and a faculty of 
firmly grasping the parts she undertook, that, neverthe- 
less, her performances were, when tried by the stand- 
ard of those of other actresses who had preceded her, 
crude and coarse. Even so late as 1 843 it would ap- 
pear that she had not developed that perfect finish as 
a tragic actress which later years brought, and there 
was color for the remark made by that highly accom- 
plished actor, Macready, in his diary, under date of 
New York, October 23, of the year above mentioned : 
"The Miss Cushman, who acted Lady Macbeth, in- 
terested me much. She has to learn her art." But 
Macready recognized her abilities as beyond question ; 
or otherwise, subsequently to this, he would not have 
invited her to play with him again in New York, and 
later in Boston, and still later to honor him by her 
support in England. During her stay at the Tre- 
mont Miss Cushman was cast for almost everything. 
She even played such " breeches parts," as they are 
termed, as Henry, in " Speed the Plough," and Fortu- 
nate* Falconi, in the charming little drama, "Matteo 
Falconi." It was about this time that I saw her as 
Madge Wildfire, in the " Heart of Midlothian," a per- 
formance in which she was very effective. This was 
not Boucicault's "Jeanie Deans," but an older piece 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. Y Q l 

founded on Sir Walter Scott's great novel. I can to 
this day distinctly remember Miss Cushman's singing 
the various snatches of old ballads with which the part 
abounds, and the entire rendition was one of strong 
melodramatic tendencies. Nothing could be more 
natural in after years than the transition from this part 
to that of Meg Merrilies, although in the one we had 
the fulness and the elasticity of youth, and in the other 
the simulation of almost tottering senility. Later in 
the season, when that delight of the juveniles, "The 
Forty Thieves," was produced for the holidays, Miss 
Cushman was the Morgiana, and her songs and duets 
with Ganem were invariably encored, while her danc- 
ing was well worth seeing. I have instanced this sim- 
ply to show that in the study of her art Miss Cushman 
was thorough, and that she was well grounded in all its 
most minute particulars. In those days, if an aspirant 
had any dramatic instincts whatever, they were certain 
of being brought out, for then there was a school for 
acting ; while now, more 's the pity, legitimate acting, 
with but a few honorable exceptions — to such an extent 
has the public taste been perverted by the spectacular 
and meretricious drama — has become almost a lost 
art ; and so much is such a state of things deplored by the 
worthies of the stage, that within a twelvemonth I have 
heard that well-graced actor, the Nestor of his profes- 
sion, Mr. John Gilbert, deplore the fact that the ten- 
dencies of dramatic art were such that, in his opinion, 
five years hence it would be almost an impossibility to 
cast a standard tragedy or comedy, with due regard to 
its proper and complete representation. 



!6 2 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

It is a singular coincidence that the day upon which 
these lines are written (Dec. 20, 1881) is the fortieth 
anniversary of the production at the Tremont Theatre 
(Dec. 20, 1 841) of Boucicault's ever popular comedy, 
" London Assurance," and Miss Cushman was the 
Lady Gay Spanker. The piece was well cast to the 
stock company. Gilbert was the Sir Harcourt Court- 
ley ; William Creswick, still on the stage in England, 
and the then leading man of the Tremont, was the 
Charles Courtley ; that superb light comedian, J. M. 
Field, who will be remembered by theatre-goers of the 
present day, for his inimitable performance of Hawkes- 
ley in " Still Waters Run Deep," was the Dazzle; and 
the fine eccentric comedian, William F. Johnson, the 
Mark Meddle. The piece could not fail of having a 
grand representation with such a cast, but it was the 
general impression that neither Miss Cushman nor 
Mr. Gilbert were fully up to the requirements. Long 
afterwards, when I saw Miss Cushman play Lady Gay, 
and felt myself somewhat competent to judge in the 
matter, I made up my mind that the performance was 
a spasmodic one. It was good only in spots. It was 
heavy. The part is the embodiment of pure comedy, 
and should be made as light as thistledown. Miss 
Cushman' s face and figure were greatly against her, 
and instead of floating through the part on the very 
top-sparkle of joyousness, she seemed to me con- 
strained, severely serious, and even tragical, as com- 
pared in the performance with other actresses I have 
seen. The same remarks will apply to her Constance 
in "The Love Chase," and to the greater portion of 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



163 



her Juliana in the " Honeymoon,", though I am free 
to confess that in this latter part when she assumed her 
true position as the Duchess Aranza, there was a dig- 
nity and a majesty in her appearance and acting, which 
I never saw approached before or since. 

At the close of this season Miss Cushman left Bos- 
ton, and when next I saw her in that city, it was at the 
Melodeon, now the Gaiety Theatre, which had been 
fitted up as a temporary theatre by a Mr. Leander 
Rodney. This was in the fall of 1844. The season 
was a brief one, lasting, I think, but three weeks. The 
attraction was William Charles Macready. Miss Cush- 
man was, of course, the principal female support, and 
during the season she appeared in such parts as Queen 
Gertrude in " Hamlet," Lady Macbeth, Julie de Morte- 
mar in "Richelieu," Mrs. Oakley in "The Jealous 
Wife," Emilia in " Othello," Goneril in " King Lear," 
etc. This, it will be seen, was a broad range of char- 
acters, and eminently adapted to show the lady's 
versatility. That she had improved, and that greatly, 
since last she graced the Boston boards, was beyond a 
peradventure. I think her connection with Macready 
had much to do with this improvement ; for she cer- 
tainly could not have been associated with this most 
accomplished and scholarly artist, without appreciating, 
and, in fact, imbibing many of his ideas. In any 
event, she had become more subdued, and, as a conse- 
quence, more natural. Her Gertrude was the finest I 
ever saw, while her Emilia was something wonderful, 
indeed a new revelation. Never have I heard the 
great speech — 



164 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" The Moor 's abus'd by some most villanous knave, 
Some base, notorious knave, some scurvy fellow : — 
O, heaven, that such companions thou 'dst unfold ; 
And put in every honest hand a whip 
To lash the rascal naked through the world, 
Even from the east to the west," 



delivered with such emphasis of gesture and such 
grandeur of tone. At its close she "took the stage," 
and she held it, too, being for the time the great cen- 
tral figure, in which all the others were merged. The 
look of withering scorn and contempt which she flung 
at Iago was the very sublimity of acting. But her 
whole performance was of a piece with this, while her 
death scene was very tender and pathetic. It will be 
remembered that in a strictly dramatic ratio, Emilia 
ranks as the fifth part in importance in the tragedy. 
Othello, Iago, Cassio, and Desdemona take precedence 
of it. In a stock company it is invariably assigned to 
the lady who plays what is termed, in the technicality 
of the stage, the "leading heavies." The part pos- 
sesses strong dramatic situations and abounds in telling 
speeches, that would in themselves carry any perform- 
ance, no matter how ordinary, to a satisfactory conclu- 
sion. When I assert that it has been my good fortune 
to have seen Miss Cushman elevate the part to the first 
consideration in the presentation of the tragedy, an 
idea of her greatness in it may be readily conceived. 
Her Goneril was another strong piece of acting, and in 
it she made every line tell. It is an unsympathetic 
and thankless character to perform, but at Miss Cush- 
man's hands it received every consideration. I can 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ^ 

well remember the audiences which filled the Melodeon 
on the occasion of every performance during this brief 
though memorable season. There nightly were to be 
seen Longfellow, Lowell, and George S. Hillard; 
Thomas H. Perkins and Abbott Lawrence and the 
Otises and the Winthrops ; Charles Sumner and Rufus 
Choate and the Curtises ; while towering above all 
was the grand and imposing form of Daniel Web- 
ster. The very best classes of the community — its 
intellect as well as its wealth — were represented • and, 
I doubt, if since then such cultivated audiences ever 
assembled within the walls of a theatre in this city to 
honor the drama in the persons of its then foremost 
representatives. 

From the close of this engagement till the fall of 
1849, covering a period of five years, Miss Cushman 
was not again seen in Boston until her return fresh 
from her English triumphs, when she appeared at the 
Federal Street Theatre for a three weeks' engagement, 
under the management of Humphrey W. Bland. She 
brought with her, as her support, Mr. Charles W. Coul- 
dock, a most excellent actor, whose performances are 
still a delight to all who witness them. This engage- 
ment of Miss Cushman's was one continuous ovation, 
and the houses were crowded nightly. It was at this 
time that I first saw her in that lugubrious and tear- 
compelling piece, the " Misanthrope and Repentance," 
of the German Kotzebue, which is more familiar to 
American play-goers as "The Stranger." I had previ- 
ously seen Charles Kean and his wife in this lachry- 
mose drama (which has, I trust, been permanently 



l66 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

banished from the stage), and justly celebrated as Mrs. 
Kean was for her fine performance of Mrs. Haller, I 
incline to 'the belief that Miss Cushman was much her 
superior, and that her entire performance was more 
satisfying and much more effective. Miss Cushman 
wrought on every feeling which the audience possessed. 
Pathos, passion, remorse, repentance, maternal affec- 
tion, were alike to her, and all were touched with a 
master hand and by the mighty inspiration of genius. 
So powerful was this performance, so impressive was it, 
so much did it touch the sensibilities of the auditors, 
that I have known ladies to be removed from the 
theatre in hysterics, and have seen strong-framed and 
strong-brained men weeping like children. Indeed, 
so much did Miss Cushman herself enter into the 
spirit of the part that I have, on more than one occa- 
sion, seen 

" Cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks." 

There was a whole lifetime of wretchedness and woe in 
the two-and-a-half hours' performance, and when at 
last the curtain fell on it the intensity of the relief was 
most welcome. It is possible that in my day there 
may be as good a representative of this part as was 
Miss Cushman; but good or bad, I trust I may be 
spared the infliction of ever again being called upon to 
witness this most morbidly melancholy play. It was 
during this engagement that I saw Miss Cushman enact 
for the first time the character of Ion in the late Justice 
Talfourd's play of that name. This tragedy, so strictly 
classical as it is, has now scarce a foothold on the 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ify 

stage. It was originally produced at Covent Garden 
Theatre, London, on the 26th of May, 1836, and 
Macready was the original Ion. Several years subse- 
quent Miss Ellen Tree took up the part, and in a 
measure made it her own. For the present time the 
play may be looked upon as "too preachy," yet it has 
some strong dramatic situations, and the characters are 
boldly drawn. Of Macready's performance it was said 
by the author that " by the graces of beautiful elocu- 
tion he beguiled the audience to receive the drama as 
belonging to a range of associations which are no 
longer linked with the living world, but which retain an 
undying interest of a gentler cast, as a thing which 
might have been; and then, by his fearful power of 
making the fantastic real, he gradually rendered the 
whole possible — probable — true ! " This language 
could apply with equal justice to the performance of 
Miss Cushman. While her elocution was faultless, she 
invested her various scenes with so much that was life- 
like as, indeed, to make " the fantastic real." In looks 
she was the very part itself, and though I object to 
women unsexing themselves on the stage, there was so 
much to be commended in this entire performance of 
Miss Cushman as to completely overshadow what 
might be looked upon by many as a trivial matter. 
During this engagement Miss Cushman performed 
Pauline in " The Lady of Lyons," by no means a good 
piece of acting, and I think for the first time in this 
city, appeared as Meg Merrilies, — but of this I will 
speak hereafter. I feel somewhat astonished when I 
look back, in contemplating the amount of work which 



1 68 CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Miss Cushman at this time would accomplish in the 
course of a night. Now, a single play, occupying a 
scant two hours and a half in representation, suffices 
for an entertainment, to witness which an inordinately 
large admission fee is charged. At prices nearly fifty 
per cent less than those which obtain at present, Miss 
Cushman has played, in one evening, Queen Katherine 
and Mrs. Simpson, or Lady Macbeth and Juliana ! Of 
a certainty Miss Cushman was a great worker physi- 
cally as well as mentally. 

But I fear I should become wearisome did I dwell 
on all the parts which I have seen Miss Cushman play, 
and in general terms I will assume that, in the range of 
legitimate tragedy, there can be no doubt that her 
Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine stand out in the 
boldest relief. Of these two parts it is safe to say that 
her Queen Katherine was the most finished perform- 
ance. It was indeed " one entire and perfect chryso- 
lite " with " no hinge or loop to hang a doubt upon." 
Certainly, so far as the stage of the present day is 
concerned, the part died with Miss Cushman. It is 
possible that the future has in store other worthy rep- 
resentatives of Queen Katherine, but I question if the 
equal (assuredly not the superior) of Miss Cushman 
will ever again be witnessed in it. The great charm of 
this glorious assumption was found in its evenness and 
perfect naturalness throughout. There was no over- 
straining for effect, and if there were times when an 
unusually strong point was made, it was made with 
such exquisite finesse that in no degree whatever did 
it overstep the modesty of nature. A familiar instance 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



169 



of this will be recalled in the last scene of the second 
act of the play (" King Henry the Eighth "), wherein 
the Court, together with Wolsey and the Pope's legate, 
the Cardinal Campeius, are assembled for the purpose 
of adjudicating on the question of Katherine's divorce 
from the King. The Queen has made her noble plea 
to Henry for justice and delay until she can advise 
with her friends in Spain, when Wolsey interposes with 
the speech, — 

" You have here, lady, 

(And of your choice), these reverend fathers; men 

Of singular integrity and learning, 

Yea, the elect of the land, who are assembled 

To plead your cause. It shall be therefore bootless 

That longer you desire the court ; as well 

For your own quiet, as to rectify 

What is unsettled in the King." 

Campeius also takes up the question, saying, 

" His grace 
Hath spoken well, and justly : therefore, madam, 
It 's fit this royal session do proceed ; 
And that, without delay, their arguments 
Be now produced and heard." 

Miss Cushman, representing Katherine as looking 
upon Wolsey as her enemy, listened to his speech with a 
half contemptuous sneer, but to the words of Campeius 
she paid profound and deferential attention. At their 
conclusion she drew herself up to her extreme height 
and, swinging round so as to face Wolsey, — with flash- 
ing eye, extended arm, a grandeur of gesture befitting 
one who was 






170 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

" A queen, — certain 
The daughter of a king," 



and in a voice whose every tone was full of the majesty 
of command, — addressed him in the words 

" Lord Cardinal, — 
To you I speak," 

with such startling effect and vivid emphasis as to 
completely electrify her audience and to call forth the 
heartiest applause. The sudden transition from almost 
humbleness to imperious command was one of the 
finest things I have ever witnessed on the stage. I 
do not think that an actress of lesser note than Miss 
Cushman could have made so fine a point without its 
degenerating into clap-trap. In her case it was such 
a natural, such a womanly, yea, such a queenly out- 
burst — the tones of the voice and the dignity of the 
action were so harmonious — that the brilliance of the 
point in no wise overshadowed the evenness or the ex- 
quisite finish with which the preceding and succeeding 
portions of the scene were portrayed. Equally fine 
was her reply to Griffith, just previous to her exit. 
She is departing the court when he apprises her that 
she is called back. She replies to him 

" What need you note it ? pray you keep your way : 
When you are called, return.". 

The emphasis on this last " you " was given with such 
an admixture of petulance, contempt, and even disgust 
that it invested her closing lines 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. iyi 

" Now, the Lord help, 
They vex me past my patience I — pray you, pass on :- 
I will not tarry ; no, nor ever more, 
Upon this business, my appearance make 
In any of their courts," 

with an impressiveness and a significance which they 
would not otherwise have obtained. Great as Miss 
Cushman unquestionably was in this scene, I none the 
less incline to the opinion that her finest work was 
found in her interview with the two Cardinals in the 
first scene of the third act, and in her death in the 
second scene of the fourth act. I have looked upon 
many a death scene on the stage as portrayed by 
Rachel and Ristori and the hosts of lesser lights, both 
male and female, but never saw anything more im- 
pressive than this of Miss Cushman's. I am not aware 
that the specific disease of which Katherine died has 
been made mention of by any of her historians. Miss 
Strickland speaks of her malady as an incurable dis- 
ease. Miss Cushman's treatment of the death, strictly 
in accordance as it was with historical tradition, would 
seem to convey the idea that the decease was caused 
by consumption, and having this idea in view, the 
working up of the entire " business " of the scene was 
a marvellous piece of stage effect, in no degree incon- 
sistent with nature. The dissolution was so gradual 
that, from the very opening of the scene, one entirely 
unfamiliar with the history of Katherine could not fail 
of being prepared for what was certain to ensue ; and 
when the culmination took place the impression left 
was so profoundly sad that tears became almost a 



172 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



necessity to the audience as affording relief to the 
intense tension to which their sympathies were wrought. 
And in this respect the result was the direct opposite 
from that attained in the portrayal of Mrs. Haller. 

I look upon the Lady Macbeth of Miss Cushman as 
a massive performance, as great in its way as is the 
Othello of Tommaso Salvini. I think it was more 
strongly imbued with the true Shakespearian spirit than 
was the representation of the same character by Mrs. 
Siddons, as handed down to us by tradition. This 
lady was in the habit of wearing a blond wig in the 
part, and of making of this sternest of women, on the 
evidence of Thomas Campbell, a delicate beauty. 
Indeed, in her " Remarks on the Character of Lady 
Macbeth," Mrs. Siddons says : " In this astonishing 
creature one sees a woman in whose bosom the pas- 
sion of ambition has almost obliterated all the char- 
acteristics of human nature ; in whose composition are 
associated all the subjugating powers of intellect, and 
all the charms and graces of personal beauty. You 
will probably not agree with me as to the character 
of that beauty ; yet, perhaps this difference of opinion 
will be entirely attributable to the difficulty of your 
imagination disengaging itself from that idea of the 
person of her representative which you have been so 
long accustomed to contemplate. According to my 
notion, it is of that character which I believe is gen- 
erally allowed to be most captivating to the other sex 
— fair, feminine, nay, perhaps even fragile, — 

* Fair as the forms that, wove in Fancy's loom, 
Float in light visions round the poet's head.' " 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



173 



It is very certain that Miss Cushman did not agree 
with her famous prototype as to the character of the 
beauty of Lady Macbeth, for in her delineation of the 
part she appeared almost in her own proper person, 
which I must be permitted to say, albeit grand and 
imposing, had no vestige of what was fair, feminine, or 
fragile, In person Miss Cushman was as robust as her 
performance of Lady Macbeth was masculine, and she 
governed her pliant lord, who was so " infirm of pur- 
pose," by the force of a superior will rather than by 
blandishments or personal attractions. There was one 
little touch in Miss Cushman's embodiment of the char- 
acter that, so far as my experience goes, was entirely 
overlooked by other actresses. This was in the only 
interview (Act I. Scene 6) the lady has with "the 
gracious Duncan" All the other Lady Macbeths that 
I have seen invariably met the King in a fawning and 
cringing manner. Miss Cushman alone, while paying 
due homage to Duncan as her sovereign, still preserved 
the dignity of her standing ; and, though playing the 
hostess to perfection, she never for a moment per- 
mitted her audience to lose sight of the fact that 
socially and by birth she was the peer of the King, — 
being, as she was, the granddaughter of a sometime 
King of Scotland, Kenneth IV., killed, in 1003, fighting 
against Malcolm II. who was the grandfather of Dun- 
can. Aside from this I cannot call to mind that Miss 
Cushman invented any new points in her delineation 
of the character, which was, with this exception, of the 
traditional order, except a very delicate bit of business 
at the close of the reading of the letter of her husband 



174 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



(Act I. Scene 5), wherein she pertinently suited the 
action to the word and the word to the action by lay- 
ing it to her heart, in putting the missive into her 
bosom, instead of holding it in her hand as has been 
customary with all the other representatives of the part 
I have seen. I have spoken of the masculine element 
which pervaded her interpretation of this part ; but after 
all, this was at times relieved by the loving tenderness 
and solicitude of the wife, which occasionally asserted 
itself above the ambition of the woman. Particularly 
noticeable was this in the second scene of the third 
act, where the reading of the lines — 

" How now, my lord ? Why do you keep alone, 
Of sorriest fancies your companions making ? 
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 
With them they think on ? " 

and in the subsequent speech — 

" Come on, 
Gentle my lord ; sleek o'er your rugged looks ; 
Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night." 

And then too in the Banquet scene, what a whole his- 
tory was there conveyed in her pronouncing the line — 

" You lack the season of all natures, sleep," 

to the man who had murdered sleep and as a conse- 
quence should sleep no more ! In the Murder scene 
she was superlatively great. She made all that was 
to be made of th&t one little piece of filial affection 
which she displays when, in speaking of the assassina- 
tion of Dimcan, she says — 

" Had he not resembled 
My father as be slept, I had done 't ; " 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. ij$ 

while the tones of her voice in speaking the words — 

" Infirm of purpose, 
" Give me the daggers I" 

and her action in grasping them, were as those of a 
fury. Then too on her return from having blood- 
smeared 

" The faces of the grooms withal, 
For it must seem their guilt," 

what contempt there was as she showed her hands, red 
with the blood of Dunca?i, and almost hissed out the 
lines — 

" My hands are of your color : but I shame 
To wear a heart so white ! " 

Her exit at the close of this scene was very powerful 
as she dragged — I may say almost lifted — the broken- 
down Macbeth from the stage. To be sure all this 
was art, but it was the acme of art. It was that 
species of art which finds its counterpart in nature. 
Miss Cushman obtained a well deserved notoriety for 
her Sleep-walking scene, and of a verity it was a 
superb piece of acting. I think, however, that in 
this particular instance she was outdone by Madame 
Ristori, who in this portrayal struck me as having 
reached the very outermost limit of dramatic con- 
ception and execution. Taken as a whole, however, 
it is not unnatural to assume that Miss Cushman 's 
delineation of Lady Macbeth could never be improved 
upon ; and in this connection I will say that the late 
Edward L. Davenport, next to Edwin Forrest the 
most accomplished of native actors, told me that Mac- 



176 



CHARL O TTE CUSHMA A T . 



ready (the best Macbeth who ever graced the boards) 
informed him that Miss Cushman's performance of 
Lady Macbeth was a most consummate piece of art, 
so powerful in its nature, so subtile in its conception 
as to make him feel, when on the stage with her, that 
he was less than a creature of secondary consideration, 
— in truth a mere thing of naught. 

If I have proved too far extended in my remarks 
upon these two characters, my excuse must be that I 
consider them the greatest of Miss Cushman's purely 
legitimate triumphs. 

I hold Miss Cushman — barring the Balcony scene, 
in which I must confess she was eclipsed by Signor 
Rossi — to be the best Ro7neo I ever saw. Best, 
because as a woman she knew what love was, and as 
a woman knew how love should be made. She w T ooed 
Juliet as she herself would be wooed, and hence her 
performance had no element of cold formality in it, 
but was impulsive and ardent, while constrained within 
the limits of a modest and well-bred discretion. To 
the credit of Miss Cushman be it said, she was the first 
who ever gave us a version of " Romeo and Juliet " 
in any way approaching the completeness with which 
the tragedy emanated from the mind of the great mas- 
ter. The restorations of the text which she made 
were as judicious as they were absolutely necessary to 
a complete representation. By those restorations the 
glorious light comedy part of Mercutio was rounded 
to fulness. Escalus, the Prince of Verona, was re- 
instated, and the cause of the family feud which existed 
between the Capulets and Montagues was made appar- 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. jyy 

ent to all. It was at the National Theatre, Boston, 
that I saw Miss Cushman play Romeo, the Juliet being 
a Miss Anderton. It is needless to say that the per- 
formance was an unequivocal success, and as a whole 
wellnigh faultless. But I had the same objection to 
it that I found with Ion, to wit the needlessness of the 
lady's unsexing herself. There were certainly female 
characters enough in her repertoire to suffice for the 
satisfaction of the most exacting audiences, and hence 
I never could see the necessity of her wearing the 
breeches, 

I have intimated that in the delineation of comedy 
Miss Cushman was by no means so successful as in 
her portrayal of the sterner shades of humanity. This 
fact I think she recognized herself, for in the latter 
years of her career she almost completely abandoned 
this peculiar walk of the drama. Her Rosalind and 
Beatrice were at the best but heavy assumptions, and 
she was wanting in that exuberance and buoyancy of 
spirit which made the performances of Mrs. George 
H. Barrett, Mrs. Charles Kean, and Mrs. Julia Bennett 
Barrow so exceptionally fine. Her Portia was great 
only in its declamatory portions. In the Trial scene 
she was perfection, and her delivery of the great Plea 
for Mercy dwells in my mind as a superior piece of 
dramatic reading, never excelled by that best of Shake- 
spearian readers, Frances Kemble Butler. 

Great as Miss Cushman was as a legitimate actress, 
I think her greatness went a step beyond when she 
entered the field of melodrama ; and I think moreover 
that her fame as an exponent of Meg Merrilies and 



jyS CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 

Nancy (in the adaptation of Dickens's "Oliver Twist ") 
will live long after her memory as a Lady Macbeth and 
a Queen Katherine is forgotten. Her Meg was of 
course the creation of Charlotte Cushman, rather than 
the conception of Sir Walter Scott. Such a character 
as Miss Cushman presented might have had an exist- 
ence, but of that there is a grave doubt. No one can 
for a moment question the picturesqueness of the 
entire performance, the originality of the creation, or 
the exquisite artistic " make-up," which was in itself 
a study. I know that she preferred in her latter 
days, on account of her infirm state of health and her 
great love for the Shakespearian drama, to abandon 
this part, as she had years previously abandoned that 
of the abandoned Nancy. But in this respect Miss 
Cushman could scarcely be looked upon as her own 
mistress. She had the interest of her managers to 
consult, and they, be sure, looked constantly to their 
pockets. Her artistic desires had often to give way 
to the importunities of the manager for increased 
nightly receipts. As Meg or Nancy she would in- 
variably attract an overflowing audience, — as Lady 
Macbeth or Katherine a two-thirds house. Pocket 
therefore was more potent than preference. But the 
most intense of all her creations was Nancy. It was 
the perfection of realism, and vividly fascinating despite 
its repulsiveness. Her delineation of this character, 
in connection with the Bill Sikes of William H. Smith, 
Edward L. Davenport, or John Studley, and the Fagin 
of James W. Wallack the younger, was one of the 
greatest of dramatic treats. The powerful scenes of 



CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 



179 



Dickens were no longer a fiction : they became a 
reality. Of late years Miss Lucille Western made 
great fame as Nancy. She was not without talent ; but 
oh ! the gulf between her and Charlotte Cushman ! 

I doubt if there was ever a more conscientious 
actress known. I do not think she ever took a liberty 
with her author, — or, in a scene which she controlled, 
would allow a liberty to be taken by another. A 
" gag " was her abhorrence. Ever uppermost in her 
mind were those lines, which should be emblazoned 
in letters of gold in every green-room of the land : 
" And let those that play your clowns speak no more 
than is set down for them : for there be of them, that 
will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of bar- 
ren spectators to laugh too : though in the mean time 
some necessary question of the play be then to be 
considered." In this connection I may say that I 
was standing at the wing on the stage of the Globe 
Theatre one day during a rehearsal of " Guy Manner- 
ing." A well known comedian was to play the D0711- 
inie Sampson, In a scene which he had with Meg 
Merrilies he introduced some new business, which was 
by no means an improvement on the old. Miss Cush- 
man stopped him at once. " Mr. P ," said she, 

" if you have any new business or any gags to introduce 
in this scene, please reserve them until I have left the 
stage ! " 

Miss Cushman was a close and thorough student. 
There was nothing whatever of the surface actress 
about her, and the enviable position which she attained 
was the result of patient, laborious, and intelligent 



jgo charlotte cushman. 

application. To her latest day she was a student, and 
as a dramatic scholar she was " a ripe and good one." 
In conclusion allow me to say — and I bear in mind 
the great claims of many a gifted actress — that in my 
estimation Charlotte Cushman, take her for all in all, 
was the grandest English-speaking actress I ever saw. 
It may be said of her, as Thomas Campbell so beauti- 
fully said of John Philip Kemble : — 

" Hers was the spell o'er hearts 

Which only acting lends, — 
The youngest of the sister arts, 

Where all their beauty blends. 
For ill can Poetry express 

Full many a tone of thought sublime ; 
And Painting, mute and motionless, 

Steals but a glance of time ; 
But, by the mighty Actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come, — 
Verse ceases to be airy thought, 

And Sculpture to be dumb." 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Mrs. Wm. (Miss Bu- 

loid), 22, 78. 
Academy of Music, New York, 

85, 108. 
Adelaide (Queen of William 

IV), 52. 
Agramonte, E., 123. 
Albany, N. Y., 9, 10, 30, 127. 
Albany, N. Y. (Capitol at), 10. 
Albert, Prince Consort, 52. 
Albey, Portia, 130. 
Anderton, Sarah, 67, 68, 177. 
Andrews, A., 22, 26. 
Arcadian Club, N. Y. Its 

demonstration in honor of 

Charlotte Cushman, 113 

et sea. 
Army and Navy Club, N. Y. 

"3- 

Astor Place Opera House, 

N. Y., 66. 
" As You Like It," 42-44, 177. 
Athena, Miss, 130. 

Babbitt, Mary Eliza (Moth- 
er of Charlotte Cushman) 
See Mrs. Cushman. 

Baker, Mrs. (Alexina Fisher), 
22. 

Ball, Wm. T. W., Preface. 



on Charlotte Cushman 's act- 
ing, 1 56, et seq. 

Baltimore, Md., 66,87, I0 7> I2 7« 

Barrett, Lawrance, Preface, 
103. 
on Charlotte Cushman as 

Lady Macbeth, 82. 
on Charlotte Cushman as 

Nancy Sikes, 25. 
tribute to Charlotte Cush- 
man at the time of her 
death, 145, 146. 

Barrett, Mrs. Geo. H, 177. 

Barrow, Julia Bennett, 177. 

Barry, Mr. (Vocalist), 3. 

Barry, Thos., 12, 159. 

Barton, Mr., 5, 8. 

Bayswater, Eng , 42, 44. 

Beard, Jas. H, 123. 

Beckett, Harry, 123. 

" Beehive, The," 21. 

Beethoven, 90. 

Bell, Clark, 123. 

" Belle's Stratagem, The," 22. 

Bellows, Dr. H W., 87. 

Bennett, Julia Barrow, 177. 

Birmingham, Eng., 72, 76. 

Bishop, Mme. Anna, 86. 

Blake, Wm. R., 22, 78. 

Bland, Humphrey W., 165. 



1 82 



INDEX, 



" Blue Beard," 2. 

Booth, Edwin, 78 note, 86. 

Booth, Mrs. Edwin. See Mary 
Devlin. 

Booth, J. B. (Elder Booth), 127. 

Booth's Theatre, N. Y., 96, 99, 
100, no, in, 112, etseq. 

Boston, Mass., I, 2, 12, 17, 24, 
27, 29, 69, 74, 81, 84, 87, 
88, 97, 100, 101, 103, 128 
et seq., 140, 141, 160, 163, 
165, 177. 

Boston Music Hall, 90. 

Charlotte Cushman read Ode 
at dedication of its organ, 
88. 

Boitcicaidt, Dion, 21, 115, 160, 
162. 

Bowers, Mrs. D. P., 85. 

Bowery Theatre, N. Y., 8, 9. 

Bowler, Annie Kemp, 112, 123. 

Brady, Judge John R., 123. 

Braham, John, 14, 15, 16. 

" Bridal, The," 26. 

Brighton, Eng., 72. 

Bristol, Eng., 70. 

Broadway Theatre, N. Y., 61, 
65, 67, 68, 69. 

Brougham, John, 78. 

Browne, James S., 22. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
146. 

Browning, Robert, 33. 

Brutone, J. TV., 1 1 2. 

" Brutus " (Payne's), 14. 

Bryant, Wm. C, 113, 115. 
delivers address to Charlotte 
Cushman at Booth's Thea- 
tre, N. Y., 119 et seq. 

Bude, England, 90 

Buffalo, N. Y., 12. 



Bull Run, Va., Battle of, 86. 

Buloid, Miss (Mrs. William 
Abbott), 22, 78. 

Bundy, Mayor J. M., 123. 

Burroughs, Claude, 123. 

Burton, Wm. E., 19, yy, 

Burton's Theatre, N. Y. (Met- 
ropolitan), 77. 

Butler, Fanny Kemble, 177. 

Byro?z, Lord, 26. 

Caldwell, J. H., 5. 
Cambridge, Duchess of, 52. 
Campbell, Thos., 172, 180. 
Capitol at Albany, N. Y., 10. 
Carroll Jno. TV., 123. 
Chanfrau, Mrs.' Frank, 85. 
Charles, R., 130. 
Charleston, S. C, 66. 
Chase, A. S., 3. 
Cheney, Arthur, 129, 13 1. 
Chestnut Street Theatre, 

Phila., 22. 
Chicago, 111., 107, 127. 
Chippendale, TV., 22. 
Chippendale, Mrs. TV., 15. 
Choate, Rufus, 165. 
Chorley, Henry F, 50. 
his opinion of Charlotte 

Cushman's Queen Kathe- 

rine, 59. 
his " Duchess Elinor," 50, 71. 
Cincinnati, Ohio, 127. 
Clapp, H. A., Preface, 
on Charlotte Cushman's 

Lady Macbeth, 81, 82. 
on Charlotte Cushman's 

Queen Katheriyte, 97, 98. 
Clapp, TV. TV., his account of 

Charlotte Cushman's Bos- 
ton debut, 12. 



INDEX. 



183 



Clarendon, Miss, 22. 
Clarke, Edward D., on Char- 
lotte C u shman's acting, 1 60. 
Clarke, Stuart, 130. - 
Clifton, Ada, 85. 
Closel, Mme., 6. 
Coleman, Edward, 1 30. 
Collins, 0. B., 86. 
Connelly, Michael (Musical 

Director), 115. 
Connor, George, 130. 
Connor, J. H, 130. 
Cooper, Peter, 123. 
Couldock, C. ^,61,67,85,165. 

sketch of, 61 note. 
Conpa, Mr., 3. 

Covent Garden Theatre, Lon- 
don, 167. 
Cow per, Wm., 157. 
Creswick, Win., 162. 
Crocker, John, 26. 
Cushman, Charlotte : 
her birth, I. 
her genealogy, 1. 
her childhood and youth, 1, 2. 
her musical education, 2, 4, 5. 
her debut as a singer, 2, 4. 
her first bill, 3. 
her loss of voice, 5. 
studies acting, 5. 
dramatic debut in New Or- 
leans, 6. 
debut in New York, 9. 
debut in Albany, 9, 10, 127. 
debut in Boston, 12. 
professional life in America, 
9-29, 61-70, 77, 78, 85, 86, 
87, 96, 100, 103, 107, in 
et sea. 
first visit to England (1844), 
33- 



Charlotte Cushman : 
debut in London, 35, 39. 
plays with Forrest, 39. 
opinion of Forrest's acting, 

40, 104. 
professional life in England, 

35-60, 71-77. 
visits Cushman School, 101- 

103. 
manages Walnut Street 

Theatre, Phila., 22. 
Macready's influence on her 

acting, 18, 23, 25-27, 32, 

160, 163. 
association with Macready, 

18, 23, 26, 27, 51-53, 163. 
list of parts played by Miss 

Cushman, 9, 12, 13, 14, 61, 

62, 163. 
her Beatrice, 28, 29, 177. 
her Bianca, 35, 37-39, 65, 

66, 81. 
her Cardinal Wolsey, 17, 67, 

77- 
her Claude Melnotte, 67. 
her Constance in " The Love 

Chase," 162. 
her Countess in " Love," 55. 
her Elvira, 12, 23. 
her Emilia in " Othello," 18, 

163, 164. 
her Fortunato Falconi, 1 2, 160. 
her Goneril, 163, 164. 
her Hamlet, 67. 
her Henry in " Speed the 

Plough," 13, 160. 
her Ion, 166, 167. 
her Juliana, 163. 
her Julie de Mortimer, 163. 
her Lady Gay Spanker, 20, 

22, 78, 162. 



1 84 



INDEX. 



Charlotte Cushman: 

her Lady Macbeth, 6, 12, 18, 

26, 39, 78, 79, 80, 81 etseq., 

86, 96, in, 112, 114, 125, 

127, 129, 159, 160, 163, 168, 

172, 176, 177. 
her Lticy Bertram, 4. 
her Madge Wildfire, 160, 161, 

167. 
her Meg Merrilies, 14-16, 24, 

62-65, 68, 69, 79, 81, 85, 

96, 161, 177. 
her Mrs. dialler, 165,166, 172. 
her Mrs. Oakley, 163. 
her Mrs. Simpson, 1 59. 
her Morgiana in " Forty 

Thieves," 161. 
her Nancy Sikes, 16, 17, 23, 

24, 25, 64, 85, 178, 179. 
her Oberon, 21. 
her Pauline in " Lady of 

Lyons," 167. 
her Phedre, 55 et sea. 
her Poj-tia, 177. 
her Queen in " Hamlet," 14, 

23> 163. 
her Queen Katherine, 17, 51, 

52, 57, 59, 60, 96, 100, 168- 

172, 173. 
her Romeo, 17, 44-48, 66, 67, 

68, 78, 85, 176, 177. 
her Rosalind, 42-44, 177. 
her Widow Melnotte, 67. 
her readings, 72, 94, 103, 

127, 128, 138. 
criticisms on her readings, 

94, 95, 108, no. 
her last appearance in New 

York, 112 et sea. 
her last appearance in Phila- 
delphia, 125 et sea. ■ 



Charlotte Cushman : 

her last appearance in Al- 
bany, N. Y., 127. 

her last appearance in Bos- 
ton, 128 et sea. 

her illness, 76, 88, 90, 93, 
103, 107, no, 128, 140, 
142. 

her death, 142. 

her funeral, 143. 

her grave, 147. 
. her personal appearance, 6, 
10, 18, 28, 39, 43, 75, 76. 

her personal character, 32, 
64, 69, 72 etseq., 14.4 etseq. 

her affection for her family, 

32, 83. 

her love for her art, 53, 92, 
100. 

her love for children, 72, 74. 

her celibacy, 10-12. 

her social charms, 64, 72 et 
seq., 83. 

her patriotism, 86-89. 

her fortitude in illness, 91, 
92, 95- I2 8. 

her religious sentiment, 95, 
105, 106, 140, 150 et seq. 

poem by Charlotte Cush- 
man, 30, 31. 

letters of Charlotte Cush- 
man, 10-12, 86, 88, 90, 95, 
100-102, 105, 107,124, 140- 
142, 148 et seq. 

letters to Geo. Vandenhoff, 
24, 25. 

letters to her mother, 26, 
40, 41. 

her diary, 32, t,3- 

her speech in New York, 
120-122. 



INDEX. 



I8 5 



Charlotte Cushman: 
.her speech in Philadelphia, 
126, 127. 

her speech in Boston, 136- 
138. 

W. W. Clapp on Charlotte 
Cushman, 12. 

Jas. E. Murdoch on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 4, 5, 79. 

F. C. Wemyss on Charlotte 
Cushman, 16, 17. 

Geo. Vandenhoff on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 23, 24, 28, 

29, 3 6 > 37, 79, 8 o- 

Lawrence Barrett on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 25, 82, 145, 
146. 

W. C. Macready on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 26, 175, 
176. 

" Cushman Genealogy " on 
Charlotte Cushman, 27. 

James Sheridan Knowles on 
Charlotte Cushman, 45, 46. 

Mme. Marguerites on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 53 et seq. 

H. F. Chorley on Charlotte 
Cushman, 59, 60. 

Wm. Winter on Charlotte 
Cushman, 62, 63, 69, 70, 

96, 97, 1 43" 1 45- 

Henry Morley on Charlotte 
Cushman, 63. 

H. D. Stone on Charlotte 
Cushman, 63, 64. 

Laurence Hutton on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 64, 67. 

Miss Jewsbury on Charlotte 
Cushman, 64, 65. 

John D. Stockton on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 80. 



Charlotte Cushman: 
H. A. Clapp on Charlotte 

Cushman, 81, 82, 97, 98. 
Elizabeth P. Peabody on 
Charlotte Cushman, 98, 99. 
Geo. T. Ferris on Charlotte 

Cushman, 109, no. 
Julia Ward Howe on Char- 
lotte Cushman, 146, 147. 
William T. W. Ball on Char- 
lotte Cushman, i$6et seq. 
Cushman, Elkanah (father of 

Charlotte), 1, 2. 
Cushman, Mrs. E. (mother of 
Charlotte), I, 2, 8, 9, 26, 40. 
her death, 89, 90. 
Cushman, E. C. (nephew of 
Charlotte Cushman), 147. 
" Cushman Genealogy," 27. 
Cushman, Robert, 1. 
"Cushman School, The," I 

note, 101-103. 
Cushman, Susan, 21, 22,44, 4^, 

49. 7i- 
her first marriage, 19. 
her dramatic career, 19, 21, 

5°- 
playsyz///^/in London, 44,45. 
her second marriage, 49, 50. 
her death, 83. 

Darcie, R. B., 130. 
Davenport, E. L., 78, 175, 178. 
Davidge, Wm., 85. 
Delmo7iico, Charles, 123. 
Detroit, Mich., 12. 
Deuel, J. P., 130. 
"Devil's Bridge, The," 13. 
Devlin, Mary (Mrs. Edwin 
Booth), 
her debut in New York, 78. 



1 86 



INDEX. 



Devonshire, Duke of, 7 2. 
Dickens, Charles, 177, 179. 
Dodzvorth, Harvey B., 123. 
Dor emus, R. Ogden, 123. 
Drury Lane Theatre, London, 

5 1 - 

Dublin, Ireland, 42, 48, 49, 72. 
"Duchess Elinor," 50, 71. 
Dudevant, Mine. (" George 

Sand"), 154. 
Duffield, Mrs., 85. 
Dunn, J. C, 129. 
D wight, John S., 90. 
Dyott, John, 85. 

Easton, Penn., 138. 
Eaton, C. H, 12. 
Edinburgh, Scotland, 42, 91. 
Euripides, 55. 
Evarts, Win. M., 123. 

Farmer, G., 3. 

Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), 

34, 43- 
" Fazio," 35, 37 et seq., 65, 66, 

77,81,85. 
Federal Street Theatre, Boston, 

165. 
Fenno, A. W., 86. 
Ferris, George T., 

on Charlotte Cushman's 

readings, 109, no. 
Field, J. M., 162. 
" Fiend of Eddystone, The," 13. 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, N. Y., 124. 
Fisher, Alexina (Mrs. Baker), 

22. 
Fisher, Charles, 86. 
Fisher, Clara. See Mrs. J. G. 

Maeder. 



Fisher, yohn, 22. 

Florence, Italy, 71. 

Forrest, Edwin, 14, 35, 39, 51, 

156, 175- 
his dislike of Charlotte Cush- 
man, but respect for her 
character, 40. 
Charlotte Cushman on his 
acting, 40, 104. 

" Forty Thieves," 161. 

Francis, T. B., 130. 

Fredericks, W. S., 22. 

French Theatre, New Or- 
leans, 6. 

Fyffe, C. P., 130. 

Gaiety Theatre, Boston, 

163. 
Garnck, David, 134. 
" Genoese, The," 50. 
Gilbert, yohn, I, 78, 115, 161, 

162. 
Gilmore, Patrick S., 123. 
Globe Theatre, Boston, 128 

et seq., 179. 
Godwin, Parke, 123. 
"Grace Greenwood" (Mrs. 

Lippincott), 71. 
Grattan, Emma, 112. 
Great Malvern, Eng., 71. 
"Greenwood, Grace" (Mrs. 

Lippincott), 71. 
" Greville Cross, The," 13. 
Grindal, Archbishop, 133. 
Griswold, B. W., 123. 
Guild, Curtis, 129. 
his address to Charlotte 

Cushman, 131 et seq. 
"Guy Mannering," 4, 14, 15, 

24, 62-65, 68, 69, 81, 85, 

96, 179. 



INDEX. 



I8 7 



Hackett, J. H., 14. 
Hamblin, Tkos., 8, 9. 
Hamblin, Tkos. Jr., 86. 
" Hamlet," 14, 18, 23, 67, 163. 
Hancock, Gen. W. S., 113. 
Handel, Geo. Frederick, 84. 
"Happy Man, The," 51. 
Harkins, Darfl H, 123. 
Harris, Linn, 129. 
Harrison, H B., 9. 
Hatch, Rufus, 123. 
Haven, G. G., 123. 
Zfty/, CW. ye>/£«, 123. 
Hayden, Joseph, 84. 
Hayes, Annie, 130. 
Haymarket Theatre, London, 

44, 50, 71, 76. 
" Heart of Midlothian," 160. 
Hemans, Felicia, 50. 
"Henry VIII.," 17, 51, 57, 59, 

67, 72, 77, 78, 85, 96-100, 

108, in, 169, 178. 
Hewitt, Abram S., 123. 
Hillard, Geo. S., 165. 
" Honeymoon," 163. 
Flosmer, Harriet, 71. 
Howard, S., 130. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 

her tribute to Charlotte 

Cushman, 146, 147. 
" Hunchback, The," 13, 65. 
Hunt, Henry, 26. 
Hurl hurt, Wm. H, 123. 
"Hut of the Red Mountain," 

J 3- 

Huttoit, Laurence, Preface, 

123. 
on Charlotte Cushman's Meg 

Merrilies, 64. 
on Charlotte Cushman in 

male characters, 67. 



" Ion," 166. 

Irelaiid, Joseph JV., Preface. 



"Jane Shore," 9, 13. 
Jarrett, Hemy C-, 123. 
"Jealous Wife, The," 51, 52, 

163. 
Jefferson, Joseph, ('• Rip Van 

Winkle"), 115. 
Jews bury, Geraldine E., 

on Charlotte Cushman's Meg 

Merrilies, 64. 
letter to Charlotte Cushman, 

76, 77- 
"Joan of Arc," 13. 
Johnson, Wm. F., 162. 
Jones, Patrick, 123. 



Kean, Charles, 165. 

Kean, Mrs. Charles (Ellen 
Tree), 165, 166, 167, 177. 

Kean, Edmund, 37, 45. 

Kemble, Fanny, 94, 177. 

Kemble, John Philip, 134, 179. 

Kenneth IV. of Scotland, 173. 

Kent, Duchess of, 52. 

" King Lear," 14, 163. 

King's Chapel, Boston, 143. 

Knowles, J. Sheridan, 26. 
his criticism of Charlotte 
Cushman's Romeo, 45. 

Kotzebue, Augustus F. F. von, 
165. 

Kuffner, Mr. (composer), 3. 



"Lady of Lyons, The," 51, 

67, 167. 
Latham, W. H, 22. 



188 



INDEX. 



Laura Keene's Theatre, 61 

note. 
Lawrence, Abbot, 165. 
Le Clear, Thomas, 123. 
LeClerq, Charles, 112. 
Leghorn, Italy, 71. 
Lenox, Mass., 138. 
" Liberty Tree, The," 13. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 88, 89. 
Lingard, James, 86. 
Lippincott, Mrs. (" Grace 

Greenwood "), 71. 
Liverpool, Eng., 33, 42, 49. 71, 

72, 76, 83. 
Locke, D. R., 123. 
London, Eng., 18, 34, 36, 39, 

40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 

50, 61 note, 66, 71, 72, 75, 

76, 77, 89, 167. 
"London Assurance," j8, 162. 
first production in United 

States and original cast, 

21, 22. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 27, 165. 
" Love," 55. 
" Love Chase," 162. 
Lovell, Henry V., 26. 
Lover, Samuel, 49. 
Lowell, James Russell, 142, 156. 
Lyne, Thos A., 26. 



" Macbeth," 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 18, 

26, 34, 39, 78, 79. 80, 81, 
82, 86, 96, in, 112 et seq., 
125, 127, 129 et seq., 159, 
160, 163, 168, 172-176. 

Macdonald, J. W., 123. 
Macready, Win. C, 18, 23, 26, 

2 7, 34,39. 5 1 * 8o » II2 > l6 7- 
his influence on Charlotte 



Cushman's acting, 18, 23, 

25-27, 32, 160, 163. 
plays with Charlotte Cush- 

man, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 51- 

53, 163. 
on Charlotte Cushman's 

Lady Macbeth, 176. 
Maddox, Mr. (manager), 35, 

36, 37- 
Madison Square, New York, 

124. 
Maeder, James G., 2, 4, 5. 
Maeder, Mrs. James G. (Clara 

Fisher), 2, 4, 21. 
Malcom IT. of Scotland, 173. 
Malvern, Eng., 83, 91, 93. 
Manchester, Eng., 64, 76. 
Marcy, Gov. Wm. L., 9. 
" Margaret of Burgundy," 13. 
Marguerites, Mine, de, 53. 
" Marino Faliero," 26. 
Marlowe, Ozvcn, 85. 
" Marriage of Figaro," 2. 
" Married Life," 13. 
Marshall, Edmund A., 61. 
Mason, Charles Kemble, 86. 
Mathieu, Wilhelm, 90. 
" Matteo Falconi," 160. 
Mayer, Constant, 123. 
Maywood, Mary (Mrs. Duve- 

nel— Mrs. S. B. Wilkins), 

22. 
McBride, Cecelia, 26. 
Meade, Edwin R., 123. 
Melodeon, Boston, 27, 163, 165. 
Mercer, Sally, 33, 138. 
" Merchant of Venice," 13, 

108, 109, 177. 
Merriman, Mrs. (Mrs. Mus- 
pratt). See Susan Cush- 



INDEX. 



Metropolitan Theatre, N. Y. 

(Burton's), 77. 
" Midsummer Night's Dream," 

21. 
Millard, Harrison, 123. 
Mitchell, John, 34. 
Moran, Edward, 123. 
Morley, Henry, on Charlotte 

Cushman's Meg Merrilies, 

63- 

"Mountaineers, The," 13. 

Mount Auburn Cemetery, 
Cambridge, 141, 147. 

Mozart, 90. 

" Much Ado About Nothing," 
26, 28, 177. 

Murdoch, James E., 4, 13. 
on Charlotte Cushman's act- 
ing, 4, 5> 79- 

Muspratt, Ida, 72. 

Muspratt, James, 49. 

Muspratt, Dr. J. S., 49. 

Muspratt, Mrs. J. S. (Mrs. 
Merriman). See Susan 
Cushman. 

M'Vicke^Jas, H, 107. 

M'Vicker's Theatre, Chicago, 
107. 

" Nabob of an Hour, The," 

22. 
Naples, Italy, 71. 
Narragansett, R. I., 103. 
National Theatre, Boston, 67, 

177. 
National Theatre, New York 

(Church Street), 14. 
Nelsoit, Homer A., 123. 
Nesbit, Mrs., 43. 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 76. 
New Haven, Conn., 86. 



New Orleans, La., 4, 5, 8, 66, 
103. 

Newport, R. I., 65, 90, 95, 103, 
138, 139, 140, 147. 

New York, 8, 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 
19, 20, 21, 26, 28, 50, 51, 61, 
65, 66, 67, 6S, 69, 77, 78, 
85, 87,91, 96, 100, 101, 107, 

110, III, 112, I27, I30, I36, 
137, l60. 

Niblo's Garden Theatre, N. Y., 

68, 78. 
" Norman Leslie," 13. 

"Oliver Twist," 16, 17, 23, 

25, 64, 85, 178. 
" Othello," 13, 18, 45, 163. 
" Our American Cousin," 61, 

note. 

Paget, Sir James, 91, 93. 
Palestrina, Giovanni, 90. 
Palmer, Harry, 123. 
Paris, France, 34, 36, 50, 71, 

72, 90. 
Parker House, Boston, 140, 

142. 
Park Theatre, N. Y., 8, 12, 

13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 26, 

28, 50. 
Paton, Mary Anna. See Mrs. 

Wood. 
Pattison, J. N , 123. 
Peabody, Elizabeth, P., on Char- 
lotte Cushman's Queen 

Katherine, 98, 99. 
Pearson, Harry, 86. 
Pelby, Miss, 130. 
Perkins, Thos. H, 165. 
" Phedre," 55, 57, 58. 
Phelps, B. K, 123. 



190 



INDEX. 



Philadelphia, Penn., 19, 21, 22, 
24, 50, 51, 66, 87, 125, 126, 
127, 128. 

Pierrepont, Edwards, 123. 

Pierson, C, 130. 

Pitman, J, 130. 

" Pizarro," 14, 23. 

Placide, Henry, 22, 78. 

Polk, J. B., 123. 

Poole, Jno., 159. 

" Poor Soldier, The," 4. 

Power, Tyrone, 51. 

/V#j, J/r., 3. 

Princess's Theatre, London, 35, 
36, 37, 40. 

Queen, Lizzie, 130. 

Rachel : 

Charlotte Cushman's admira- 
tion for her, 53. 
Charlotte Cushman and Ra- 
chel compared, 54 et sea. 

Racine, 55. 

Ranger, W., 50. 

" Richelieu," 163. 

Ristori, Adelaide, 77. 

Charlotte Cushman on her 
acting, 128. 

Roberts, Charles, 115, 123. 
his reading of Stoddard's 
Ode to Charlotte Cush- 
man, 119, 

" Rob Roy," 13. 

Rockwell, Charles, 112. 

Rodney, Leander, 163. 

Rogers, Felix, 86. 

Rome, Italy, 71, 77, 83, 84, 87, 
88, 89,90,92, 105, 133, 150. 

" Romeo and Juliet," 17, 44-48, 
66, 67, 68, 78, 85, 176. 



Roosevelt, Robert B., 123. 
Rossi, Ernesto, 176. 
Ryder, John, 26. 



Salomon, S. N., 123. 

Salvini, 71, 172. 

" Sand Geo." (Mme. Dude- 
vant), 154. 

Sands, W. A., 130. 

Sargent, Epes, 50. 

Sarony, N., 123. 

" Satan in Paris," 51. 

Savannah, Ga., 66. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 62, 64, 161, 178. 

Seaf orth Hall,Liverpool, 49, 84. 

Sefton, John, 86. 

Sezvard, Clarence A., 123. 

Seward, Miss, 89. 

Seward, Win. H., 89. 

Shaker Settlement near Al- 
bany, N. Y., 30. 

Shakespeare, 42, 43, 44, 47, 80, 
94, 96, 98, 108, 109, 115, 
125, 133, 172. 

Shaw, Judge, 27. 

Sheffield, Eng., 72, 76. 

Sheppard, Edwin, 112. 

Shewell, L. R., 78. 

Siddons, Mrs., 101, 1 12, 134, 
158, 172. 

" Simpson & Co.," 159. 

Simpson, Edmund, 8, 12, 19. 

Simpson, Sir James, 91, 93. 

Sims, Dr. J. Marion, 90. 

Smith, Wm. H., 178. 

Southampton, Eng., 44. 

" Speed the Plough," 13, 160. 

Spenser, Edmund, 119. 

St. Charles Hotel, N. O.. 104. 

St. Charles Theatre, N. O., 4. 



INDEX. 



IQI 



Stebbins, Emma, Preface, 90, 

91, 147. 
quoted, 14, 138. 
her bust of Charlotte Cush- 

man, 84. 
Stebbins, Henry G., 123. 
Stedman, Mr. (vocalist), 3. 
" Still Waters Run Deep," 162. 
St. Louis, Mo., 86, 127. 
Stockton, F. R., 123. 
Stockton, Jno. D., On Charlotte 

Cushman's acting, 80. 
Stoddard, Richard H., w^, 115. 
his ode to Charlotte Cush- 

man, 116 et sea. 
Stoddart, Mrs. George, 85. 
Stone, H. D., his criticism of 

Charlotte Cushman's Meg 

Merrilies, 63, 64. 
Story, Judge, 27. 
"Stranger, The," 13, 61, 85, 

165, 172. 
Stratford-on-Avon, 133. 
Strickland, Agnes, 171. 
Stuart, Wm., 123. 
Studley, J. B.,8$, 178. 
Sullivan, Algernon S., 123. 
Sumner, Charles, 27, 165. 
Sunderland, Eng., 76. 

Talfourd, Serg't. Thos. N., 

41, 166. 
" Taming of the Shrew," 85. 
Taylor, John, 130. 
Telford, Daniel D. , 1 23. 
Thackeray, Wm. M., 70. 
Theatres : 

Academy of Music, N. Y., 

85, 108. 
Astor Place Opera House, 

66. 



Theatres : 

Booth's Theatre, N. Y., 96, 
99, 100, 1 10, 1 1 1, \\2 et sea. 

Boston Music Hall, 90. 

Bowery Theatre, N. Y , 8, 9. 

Broadway Theatre, N. Y., 
61, 65, 67, 68, 69. 

Burton's Theatre, N. Y. 
(Metropolitan), yy. 

Chestnut Street Theatre, 
Phila., 22. 

Covent Garden Theatre, Lon- 
don, 167. 

Drury Lane Theatre, Lon- 
don, 51. 

Federal Street Theatre, 
Boston, 165. 

French Theatre, N. O., 6. 

Gaiety Theatre, Boston, 163. 

Globe Theatre, Boston, 128 
et sea., 179. 

Haymarket Theatre, Lon- 
don, 44, 50, 71, y6. 

Laura Keene's Theatre, 
N. Y., 61 note. 

Melodeon, Boston, 27, 163, 
165. 

Metropolitan Theatre, N. Y. 
(Burton's), yy. 

M'Vicker's Theatre, Chi- 
cago, 107. 

National Theatre, Boston, 
8, 6 7 , 177. 

National Theatre, N. Y. 
(Church Street), 14. 

Niblo's Garden Theatre, 
N.Y., 68,78. 

Park Theatre, N. Y.,8, 12, 13, 
14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 26, 28. 50. 

Princess's Theatre, London, 
35> 3 6 > 37, 40. 



192 



INDEX. 



Theatres : 

St. Charles Theatre, N. O., 4. 

Tremont Theatre, Boston, 
2, 159, 160, 162. 

Tweddle Hall, Albany, 127. 

Walnut Street Theatre, 
Phila., 22. 

Winter Garden, N. Y., 85. 
Thompson, Charlotte, 115. 
Thompson, E. G. } 123. 
Tietjens, Teresa, 128. 
Tilden, Sainl J., 113, 123. 
" Time Works Wonders," 51. 
" Timor the Tartar," 14. 
Tissington, H., 123. 
Toledo, Ohio, 106. 
Toomer, Mr. 26. 
"Town and Country," 21. 
Trovers, W. R., 123. 
Tree, Ellen (Mrs. Chas Kean), 

165, 166, 167, 177. 
Tremont House, Boston, 2. 
Tremont Theatre, Boston, 2, 

159, 160, 162. 
Trenton, New Jersey, 127. 
Tweddle Hall, Albany, 127. 
"Two Galley Slaves," 13. 

Vache, Wm. A., 26. 
Vallee Sisters, 22. 
Vandenhoff, George, Preface, 
50, 71, T12 et sea. 
meets Charlotte Cushman, 

2 3- 
impressions of her acting, 

23, 24, 28, 29. 
his account of her debut in 

London, 36, 27^ 
on her Lady Macbeth, 79, 

80. 
Vanderbilt, Wm. H., 123. 



Vanke7iish, Addie, 1 30. 

" Venice Preserved," 14. 

Vernon, Ida, 78. 

Vernon, Mrs. (Jane Marchant 

Fisher), 22. 
Vestris, M?ne., 43, 64. 
Victoria, Queen, 52, 80. 
Villa Cushman, 65. 

Waldron, G. B., 130. 
Wallack, Fanny, 66. 
Wallack, J. W. (Elder), 51. 
Wallack, J. W. (Younger), 85, 

178. 
Wallack Mrs. J. W. (Younger). 

See Ann Duff Waring. 
Wallack, Lester, 1 1 5. 
Waller, D. W., 129, 130. 
Walnut Street Theatre, Phila., 

22. 
Warde, Frederick B., 1 1 2, 123. 

his Macduff, 114. 
Waring, A7111 Duff (Mrs. Sef- 

ton, Mrs. J. W. Wallack, 

Jr.), 9- 
Washington, D. C, 66, 127. 
Watrous, Charles, 123. 
Weber, Albert, 123. 
Webster, Benj., 44. 
Webster, DanH, 27, 165. 
Webster, Sidney, 123. 
Weiss, John, 81. 
Wells, Mary, 112. 
Wemyss, F. C, 16. 
Wester 71, Lucille, 179. 
Wey7niss, T, 86. 
WJieatleigh, Chas., 112. 
Wheatley, W771., 22, 26. 
White, Mr., 3. 
Wickha7n, Wm. H., 123. 
Wilkes, Miss, 129. 



INDEX. 



193 



Wilkins, Mrs. S. B. (Mary 

Maywood), 22. 
Williams, W. H., 22. 
Williamson, J. C, 86. 
Winter Garden Theatre, N. Y., 

85. 
Winter, Wm., Preface, 
on Charlotte Cushman's 

Meg M err Hies, 62, 96. 
on Charlotte Cushman's 
Queen Katherine, 96. 



Winter, Wm., 
on Charlotte Cushman's 

Lady Macbeth, 96. ' 
on Charlotte Cushman's fare- 
well to the stage, 69, 70. 
his tribute to Charlotte Cush- 
man at the time of her 
death, 143 et sea. 
Wolverhampton, Eng., 76. 
Wood, Mrs. Joseph (Mary Ann 
Paton), 2. 




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THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY 

OF THE 

American Episcopal Church. 

By WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, D.D., LLD., 
Bishop of Iowa, Historiographer of the American Church, 

"WITH THE CO-OPERATION OP A NUMBER OP LEADING BISHOPS, CLERGY- 
MEN, AND LAYMEN. 

In Two Volumes Quarto, with Many Portraits, Views, Facsimiles, 
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This work is designed to mark the Centennial period of the organization 
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Hon. Robert C. Wtnthrop, LL.D. Rt. Rev. John Williams D.D., 
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Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D. Rt. Rev. William Bacon Stevens, 

Rev. Morgan Dix, S.T.D. D.D., LL.D. 



A MEMORIAL HISTORY 

OP THE 

County of Hartford, conn. 

ITS TOWN'S AND CITIES, 1631 TO 1881. 
In Two Volumes Quarto, Illustrated. 

Edited by J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL, LL.D., 
President of the Connecticut Historical Society. 
Rev. Samuel J. Andrews, Charles J. Hoadly, Esq., Charles 
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and cities will he intrusted to the gentlemen who are hest qualified to under- 
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and City of Hartford. Vol. II. will comprise independent histories of the 
other towns, from their settlement to the present year. 



ZTOW BEAD Y. 

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, 

Including the Present County op Suffolk. — 1630 to 1880. 

In Four Volumes, quarto, with more than 500 Illustrations hy famous 
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The subject, though a grouping of associations connected with the name 
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which Boston stands as the exponent in nearly all phases of her history. 



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!! 



